Unlistenable Music

Unlistenable Music is a laboratory for collective experimentation around the practice of ‘making music’ as a potential tool for reconnecting artistic and ritual practices. It explores artistic forms that operate within social and collective situations, contributing to, and becoming an integral part of them, rather than being presented as works to an audience.

It is about experimenting with musical forms whose raison d’être is not to be found in being listened to or watched according to the proxemic, scenographic and cultural codes of concerts or recordings, but rather in the musical practice itself and in its transformative potential. Unlistenable Music is an open and informal workshop for anyone—musician or not—interested in exploring what kind of ritual music we would need in the present context of our modern neoliberal societies, and as an antidote to them. How would it sound? How would it be played? How would it be composed? By whom? When? On what occasions?

During bi-monthly sessions, we discuss forms of unlistenable music we know from our own lives and experiences, or that we have heard about, and we try to reproduce them. We reflect on the few rituals that are still alive around us, on ancient rituals that modernity has erased, and on those that we feel are missing from our lives, and we attempt to invent new musical practices that could somehow remedy this. Music here is rather a research tool than an end in itself. This project intends to be open as much to people who have never practised music as to amateur and professional musicians. It is primarily interested in musical practices that are accessible to all, where the notions of virtuosity and musical excellence remain secondary..

coordination & facilitation: Christophe Meierhans
concept for durational participative scenography: Miriam Rohde
support: ICTUS, Brussels