#Workshop
The Hospitable Ear a workshop
November 2021
The Hospitable Ear a workshop with Julia Tieke and Zainab Ali Reza
Listening – while often considered passive – has also been framed as active perception, as a turning to the “other”, an openness described as “inner hospitality”.
Hospitability means the ability to host. If listening is inner hospitality, what are its preconditions? How do I become able to listen? What is outer and what is inner hospitality? Can they be separated? How can we attune our ears to others? How do we deal with the impossibility of not-hearing, of closing the ear? And how do we host the sound and noise around us? What can we say about local soundscapes by analyzing the social, political, and economic spheres which have produced them?
The workshop aims at exploring these questions in the local context of Jeddah – through exercises, walks, exchange, and production. Who speaks in Jeddah? Whose voice would we like to amplify, zoom into with our ears? Which are the different rhythms of the neighborhoods? How do spaces receive us, and how do we receive them?
About Julia Tieke
Julia works with and around text and sound. She is in charge of the ultra-short daily radio art format “Wurfsendung” on German public cultural radio. Julia is specifically interested in storytelling, radio as a social medium, migration of sound, and experiencing cities through acoustic means. Her projects include co-curating digging deep, crossing far in India, Germany, and Pakistan (2015-2017); research on the First Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932 (2018-ongoing); Karachi Beach Radio (with Yaminay Chaudhri, 2019-ongoing), and a Social Acoustics Residency at Errant Sound (2021).
About Zeinab Ali Reza
Zainab Alireza is an Urban Strategy Consultant holding a Masters degree from in Housing and Urbanism. In fifteen years of practice she has focused on urban design factors influencing positive public experiences considering both environmental and social opportunities. Most recently, Zainab has played key roles in the Al Rabwa Resettlement Program, the Jeddah Plans 2030 and the Connected Gaza Vision 2050.
This workshop is a collaboration between Art Jameel and the Goethe-Institute, Saudi Arabia. Led by researcher / artist Julia Tieke, working with urban strategist Zainab Ali Reza.