Joel Spring, Hearing, Loss. 2018. Image courtesy of the artist.
Te Whare Hēra Eavesdropping Residency is a partnership with City Gallery Wellington, supported by Creative Victoria, Australia.
Eavesdropping used to be a crime, but now it’s everywhere. Eavesdropping explores the politics of listening in our post-Snowden moment. But it isn’t just about big data, surveillance, and security—it’s also about our personal responsibilities listening back to power, as earwitnesses. The exhibition explores diverse technologies (audiotape, radio telescope, networked intelligence) and politics (surveillance, settler colonialism, detention). Scale ranges from the intimate to the forensic, the microscopic to the cosmic, the split second to the interminable.
The show features works by an international line-up of artists: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Fayen d’Evie and Jen Bervin, Sean Dockray, the Manus Recording Project Collective, Susan Schuppli, Joel Spring, and Samson Young. It’s an ongoing collaboration between Liquid Architecture and Melbourne Law School and was first presented last year at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne.
Te Whare Hēra Eavesdropping Residency comprises a series of short residencies in the city for exhibiting artists based in Victoria, Australia. It will support events and engagements with the Wellington public and Massey University students along the course of the exhibition.
Eavesdropping runs from 17th August–17th November 2019 at City Gallery Wellington, Te Ngākau Civic Square.
Public lecture
James Park and Joel Stern
City Gallery Wellington, Thursday 5th September, 6pm
Te Whare Hēra Eavesdropping Residency will begin with a visit from the exhibition’s curators, James Parker (of Melbourne Law School) and Joel Stern (of Liquid Architecture). As a part of City Gallery Wellington’s September 5th Open Late, they will deliver a public lecture expanding on the research that led to the Eavesdropping project and how the exhibition was conceived. The talk will introduce the many artists, musicians, sound technicians, performers and speakers who have come together to contribute to this investigation of the politics of listening and being listened to.
James Parker directs a research program on law and sound at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School. His 2015 book Acoustic Jurisprudence: Listening to the Trial of Simon Bikindi was awarded the 2017 Penny Pether Prize for scholarship in law, literature, and the humanities.
Joel Stern is a curator and artist concerned with theories and practices of sound and listening. With Danni Zuvela, he is Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture, Melbourne, which stages sonic experiences and critically reflects on systems of sonic affect at the intersection of contemporary art and experimental music.
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