Deaf experience and the transformation of hearing

Drawing on research conducted in collaboration with Tarek Atoui, Infinite Ear is curated by Council (Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman). Running concurrently with the latest chapter of Atoui’s WITHIN at Sentralbadet, Infinite Ear takes deafness as the starting point towards proposing a different experience and understanding of hearing.

Infinite Ear asks: To what extent do we hear? What can hearing and deaf people learn from each other’s ‘differently-abled’ auditory abilities? Beyond the human experience, how might practices in para-hearing – whether biological or technical entities – proffer more complex formulations of listening and hearing, extending these notions beyond audition? In what ways can such knowledge improve political representation of the diversity of hearing?

Intended as both a social space and a space of production, the exhibition presents a series of sonic exercises inspired by practices such as Deep Listening and Sound Massage, alongside a programme of movies, a library, a collection of recordings of inaudible phenomena and a display of objects and artworks. Infinite Ear thus gathers a number of collections (made of instruments, sounds, books, films and works) that will grow, sharpen and shift as the project progresses. Rather than an exhibition marking the end of a research project, Infinite Ear should be understood as the possibility of a future institution devoted to the diversity of hearing.

COUNCIL

Council is an office for art curation, research and production. Council conducts pluri-disciplinary research into social issues, resulting in various forms of publications, events, productions, talks and exhibitions. Council follows the hypothesis that a better composition of artistic, scientific and social practices could induce improved political representation. Aside from Infinite Ear, Council has developed research into the construction of Nature in the Law (The Manufacturing of Rights, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 2014–ongoing) and on how the anthropocene changes the scale of humans (On Becoming Earthling, Le Musée de l’Homme, Paris, 2015–ongoing). Initiated in Paris in 2013 by Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman, Council is regularly hosted in various cities, including Beirut, New York, Dhaka and now Bergen.

Infinite Ear is supported by Kulturrådet, Arts Council Norway