BEK Opening Week 2025: Sounds of Resistance Mixtape workshop with Amber Ablett
Published
Tuesday, January 28
BEK, C. Sundts gate 55, floor 9
Time: 17:00-21:00
The workshop is free, but registration is required. Sign up here by January 23.
Through this workshop, we will practice listening together using exercises from Pauline Oliveros’ theory of Deep Listening and Gestalt awareness experiments. We will explore how listening can become part of liberation practices and how we can centre it within artistic practices.
“The worst hole I can think of is a person having no ears. This is usually found in people who talk and talk and expect the world to listen” Frederick Perls, 1969.
As a society who talks and talks, and produces and produces, whether it is objects, buildings, excel sheets, sounds or images, how can we step away from making and centre listening. Listening is the foundation of belonging and puts us in contact with the world around us. It can connect us to others and builds community and trust: to offer an ear is to offer support and to listen in rapt silence is to show respect. To feel heard, is to feel seen, is a step towards feeling acknowledged and valued. However, to be listened to is a privilege not given to all in our society, where certain stories, experiences and voices are not deemed worthy of attention.
And yet rather than silence, the sounds of resistance surround us: from protest chants on the street, music blaring from teenagers’ bedrooms, a foot stomping along an office corridor, to folk songs, rap songs, rebel songs, nueva canción and calypso.
Each participant is invited to bring with them a sound of resistance and the workshop will end with listening to our collective Sounds of Resistance Mixtape.
AMBER ABLETT
Amber Ablett (she/her) is an artist and writer based in Vestlandet, Norway. Using performance, text, sound and re-enactment, her work looks at the importance of belonging to how we be together, with a focus on how our society shapes, reflects, controls and limits our multifaceted identities. Ablett uses her own position, as a Black woman of Irish, Trinidadian and British heritage living in Norway, as a starting point to create a space for questioning, communality and critical thinking; she is interested in how we learn about ourselves through learning about other people and the conflict between our internal and percieved sense of home. Stepping away from spectacle, Ablett often uses workshops and gatherings as an alternative to normative exhibition frameworks.
Accessibility
BEK’s space unfortunately is not wheelchair accessible. Please send us an email at bek@bek.no if you’re using a wheelchair, and we’ll do our best to facilitate your needs. Our space has all gender toilet facilities. Service dogs are welcome. We also provide the option of a quiet room.
Images: 1. Design by Blank Blank Studios 2. Amber Ablett, photo: Pål Hoff.