Archive of Listening

August, 2018

Implicit in listening is relationship and receptivity. The act of listening is an encounter with an-other; this other can be external—in the form of another human or material object—or it can be an internal or abstract other. Meanwhile, an archive is a means of preservation. The archive holds the past and history. There is tension between the idea of this preservation and the act of listening—which is necessarily present and happening in the now. This tension between an act of embodied receptivity in the present moment, which listening implies, and the idea of an archive, or preserved historical body, creates a tension between the past and present. Each body is an archive, each relationship is an archive. This tension complicates ideas of the present through refusing to let go of the places that have existed previously.