“For me deep listening is a lifelong practice. The more I listen the more I learn to listen. Deep listening involves going below the surface of what is heard, expanding to the whole field of sound while finding focus. This is the way to connect with the acoustic environment, all that inhabits it, and all that there is.” —Pauline Oliveros
Join us for a deep listening workshop facilitated by IONE and Lisa B. Kelley, longtime collaborators of Pauline Oliveros’s. Deep listening, as developed by Oliveros, explores the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening. The practice includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance, as well as listening to the sounds of daily life, nature, one’s own thoughts, imagination, and dreams. It cultivates a heightened awareness of the sonic environment, both external and internal, and promotes experimentation, improvisation, collaboration, playfulness, and other creative skills vital to personal and community growth. Inherently collaborative, the first published deep listening scores and activities (Sonic Meditations, 1971) were workshopped in the context of a female-identified collective, the fem-ensemble, over a period of many months. From the 1980s onwards, deep listening workshops, retreats, and the Deep Listening Certification Program®️ were developed and facilitated in close partnership with playwright IONE (also Oliveros’s life partner) and movement artist Heloise Gold. Today, the philosophy and practice of deep listening continues to evolve through a growing international community of listeners.
This event is the second in a two-part series intended to open ways of understanding Pauline Oliveros’s recording Accordion and Voice, currently on view in the installation Women’s Work. The first event, a screening of the film Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros followed by a Q&A with IONE and director Daniel Weintraub, takes place on May 7, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. at MoMA.
Facilitators
IONE is an author, playwright, director, and improvisational text-sound artist. In addition to multiple international performances, she has created numerous large music theater works with her creative partner and spouse, the composer Pauline Oliveros. These Include the operas The Nubian Word for Flowers and A Phantom Opera. Other works include Njinga the Queen King, The Return of a Warrior, and Io and Her and the Trouble with Him. IONE also created the film Dreams of the Jungfrau, with sound design by Oliveros. IONE’s memoir Pride of Family: Four Generations of American Women of Color, was a New York Times Notable Book. A journalist for many years, IONE published in major magazines and newspapers including the Village Voice, the Gannet Chain, and Vogue. She was artistic director of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd, for 15 years and is currently a deep listening consultant at the Center for Deep Listening in Troy, New York, and a distinguished mentor with Composers Now, New York. As founding director of the Ministry of Maåt (MoM), in Kingston, New York, IONE conducts workshops and seminars throughout the world, encouraging a vibrant international community of writers, visual artists, and musicians. IONE received the 2019 Arts Mid Hudson Individual Artists Award and a Certificate of Merit from the General Assembly of the State of New York, and was a member of the Kingston Arts Commission for several years. IONE’s most recent opera, TOUCH, created with composer Karen Power, premiered at Irish National Opera in 2021, and a VR/AR opera with the same team is in development. She is currently cohost and “Dream Keeper” on WKNY’s Dream Life Radio.
Lisa Barnard Kelley is a producer, vocalist, deep listening certificate holder, and minister priestess of Maat. Lisa has lived and performed in the Kingston area for 20 years. She spent over 12 years working closely with Pauline Oliveros and IONE as events coordinator and an artist at the Deep Listening Institute, performing in numerous festivals and concerts and collaborating with fellow deep listening artists across the globe. A member of the Kington Arts Commission, she is currently executive director of the Kingston Midtown Arts District. Kelley continues to facilitate deep listening workshops, disseminating the work of Pauline Oliveros and others through the MoM Inc. program Still Listening in Kingston. She is cohost of Dream Life Radio on Radio Kingston WKNY.
Accessibility
Live captioning is available. American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. MoMA will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Please contact [email protected] to make a request for these accommodations.
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Access and Community Programs are supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).Major funding is provided by Volkswagen of America, the Agnes Gund Education Endowment Fund for Public Programs, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art Endowment for Educational Programs, the Jeanne Thayer Young Scholars Fund, and the Annual Education Fund.