The Plank is an open community group where we explore many aspects of free improvisation and group playing. The sessions consist of some structured activity and some free play. We welcome artists of other mediums to respond within the space, or those that want to be passive within the space.
The 2023 programme has been supported by The Ranworth Trust and as a result we have been able to invite a number of guest artists to lead sessions, and make use of a variety of different venues.
This session will be led by Ximena Alarcon, focussing on Deep Listening.
Dr. Ximena Alarcón is a sound artist-researcher interested in listening and sounding our sonic migrations: the resonances left in between the borders we cross when we tune in and meet others across distant locations. Throughout her career, she has created telematic sonic improvisations and interfaces for relational listening, to understand sensorially migratory experiences.
She is a Deep Listening® certified tutor, with a PhD in Music Technology and Innovation. Her major works are Sounding Underground (IOCT-DMU, Leverhulme Trust, 2007-2009), the telematic sound performances’ series Networked Migrations (CRiSAP-UAL, 2011-2017), and INTIMAL: Interfaces for Relational Listening (RITMO-UiO, Marie Skłodowska Curie IF, 2017-2019). In Bath, with The Studio Recovery Fund 2021, she created the INTIMAL App© for people to explore their “migratory journeys”, exploring sense of place and telepresence.
Ximena composes hybrid listening rituals (online and offline) with musicians and non-trained musicians, and improvises with spoken word and voice. She has engaged in many artistic collaborations, including her participation in the NowNet Arts Ensemble since 2020.
She teaches Deep Listening® at the Center for Deep Listening, and independently, with an emphasis on Sonic Migrations.
Emerging from her INTIMAL project, Ximena leads the Intimal collective of Latin American migrant women listening to their migrations and expanding notions of femininity, territory and care.
Deep Listening Workshop
In this Deep Listening workshop you will be introduced to the origins and legacy of Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening® embodied practice and philosophy. Deep Listening seeks to expand our awareness of sound and how it travels through time and space, creating a dynamic of interaction, attention, vibration and resonance, among all of us. Through energy exercises, sonic meditations, journaling on listening, and the performance of Deep Listening Pieces, in the workshop you will be guided to experience global and focal attentional dynamics to sound, encountering many possible audible forms beyond ordinary sound perceptions in daily life.
You are welcome to observe, we welcome anyone who wants to form an audience.
The Plank is an entirely open platform, it will be curated and facilitated by Eastern Ear where appropriate but we welcome suggestions of any nature.
If you have a personal objective from attending ‘The Plank’ (such as to work with a drummer) then please make that clear to us at the beginning of the session.