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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?

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