power of listening

"THE POWER OF LISTENING"

Amsterdam/Rotterdam, 2009

Live events and installation

What happens in our heads when we listen to public speakers? Do the things we hear add up to a collective field of knowledge? Does this field have substance? Does it have language? And can it be made instrumental in politics?

In March 2008, five experts addressed these questions during a public meeting in Theater Frascati, Amsterdam. Nicoline van Harskamp chaired the meeting. Short video clips were shown to illustrate the points of the speakers.

At the end of the meeting, all members of the audience were asked to leave their phone numbers. In the week following the event, an interviewer called up to ask them about what they remembered hearing, seeing and experiencing on the night. Twenty-seven people gave a telephone interview, of between five and forty-five minutes in length.

From the transcribed recollections,
Nicoline van Harskamp drew as many
details and quotations as possible,
in order to make a collective
reconstruction of the event. She
then wrote a script for a staged
panel discussion, with as many
loops and black holes as the brain
and memory itself.

Nine actors were cast for the
reconstruction of the event:
six on the panel and three in the
audience. The actors had to work
with the often contradictory
descriptions that the interviewees
had given on the phone.
No documentation of the original
characters was offered to them to
develop their fictional ones.

Four of the six video clips that
were shown during the first meeting,
were remembered and described by
the audience. They were restaged by
actors on the basis of the
audience’s description, and
recorded in a studio.

On May 19, 20 and 21, The Power of Listening was staged live at Theater Frascati.

The performances were announced as part of an installation at Witte de With, Rotterdam.
See Prix de Rome 2009

The Power of Listening was awarded the first prize of Prix de Rome 2009, the national award for visual artists in Holland.

Video clip [follows]
Jury/catalogue text [follows]

Cast:Amy Potter, Bill Stevenson,
Peter More, Mindy Ran, Henrietta
Carey-Bryant, Bob MacLaren,
Rosalie Kreisky, Yvonne Lafleur,
Jasper Jacobs, Mark Kingston,
Emma dingwall, Danish Rajasekaram.

Poster design: Sam de Groot

Prix de Rome
Witte de With, Rotterdam
Frascati Theater, Amsterdam
Rijksakademie, Amsterdam

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