RAJNI SHAH | Listening Gathering: how we come together

Thursday, September 27, 2018 | 6:30-8:00pm
Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art
​Concordia University, EV 3.711
1455 De Maisonneuve Boulevard West
Montreal, Quebec   H3G 1M8

Within the context of Canadian art, deep listening as a decolonial practice has been a crucial part of engaging Indigenous thinking and other ways of knowing. Please join us for the inaugural event of the 2018-2019 EAHR | Media program featuring:

Rajni Shah
Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow, Acts of Listening Lab
(Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling – Department of Theatre)

Listening Gathering: how we come together

“A listening atmosphere is not improvised. It is, on the contrary, the product of a strenuous process of conception, growth and devoted attention.” – Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: a philosophy of listening

Fiumara asks what the world would be like if philosophy embraced listening as wholeheartedly as it does speaking. In this talk, Rajni Shah will explore what performance might have to offer in creating this possibility – not as a topic for discussion or exploration, but by considering the acts of gathering and listening as the central ‘work’ in the idea of an ‘artwork’.

We’ll begin by arriving, and paying attention to where we are.
We’ll let go of the ideas we were holding on to before the talk began. We’ll acknowledge the land on which we gather.
And then, we’ll begin (again).

This talk will be followed by a ‘no questions’ session, during which we will collectively experience a reorientation of the usual Q&A format.

Everyone is welcome.

Rajni Shah is a British/Indian artist whose work leans gently but clearly across disciplines, countries, and thought structures, ranging from intimate encounters with passers-by in public space to large-scale performances in theatres and galleries. Key projects – always created alongside and in collaboration with others – include hold each as we fall (1999), The Awkward Position (2003-4), Mr Quiver (2005-8), small gifts (2006-8), Dinner with America (2007-9), Glorious (2010-12), Experiments in Listening (2014-15), Lying Fallow (2014-15), Song (2016), and Feminist Killjoys Reading Group (2016-ongoing). Rajni was an Artsadmin Associate Artist (2009-2013), an Honorary Research Fellow at The Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Birkbeck College, University of London (2012-2016), and is currently a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University, affiliated with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling - Dept. of Theatre. In 2019, Rajni’s first monograph, entitled ‘We are capable of so much more: Experiments in Listening’, will be published as a book and a series of zines within Palgrave’s Performance Philosophy series. For an archive of performance works, please visit: www.rajnishah.com