As part of The Works Art & Design Festival
June 21, 22 and 23, 2013
Big Tent #1, Sir Winston Churchill Square, Edmonton, AB

The Mobile Listening Sessions engages festival-goers in a one-on-one listening experience. Whether roaming around the festival and soliciting participation or stationed in the tent at my listening booth where people can join me, I will exchange tunes with one (or two) other people at a time via mp3 player and headphones. The focused listening would be followed by a short ‘interview’ in which I ask the participants to tell me more about the song we’ve just heard.

The joy that I have known in this process – the listening session – is something that I have always appreciated sharing with others and I am curious to explore how this kind of non-verbal engaging can potentially create connection, even a kind of intimacy, among acquaintances, but especially among ‘strangers’. As music is so very evocative of other times/places and emotions, the experience of the music/listening, in an intentioned, and focused way, may create a particular zone of ‘communion.’ The particularity of presenting this ‘performance’ at the Works Festival is the fact that it will be during a largely music-based event – a time where several bands will be playing and where the audience will most likely be made-up of music lovers; a perfect moment to spontaneously connect to one-another via our love of music.

A final 2-hour group listening session will take place around the main stage of the performance tent on June 23 at 4pm.

The performance is part of a program called “No Rhyme or Reason,” curated by Terrance Houle.