Inside Listening

As part of the Gatherings programme for Glasgow International 2024, sound artist Riah Naief devised and led a listening workshop designed to recalibrate the senses to listening in a world where seeing dominates.

Through listening, listeners are open and receptive and have no intentions. Listening does not seek out a result but raises the awareness of the listener as they discover and explore sounds within them and their environment. After a meditation, participants in the workshop played instruments in a circle, moving the sound clockwise and anticlockwise engaging the left and right ear. By listening attentively to each other whilst gently introducing our own individual sound to the composition, we intended to create a sonic experience of collective harmony. (Riah Naief)

Riah Naief is a sound artist and runs Listen Gallery, a sound arts gallery and communal listening space in Glasgow. The theory and practice of listening is at the root of their practice. Sonic experimentation within the cultural sector is growing, evolving, and adapting in response to interaction and participation, Listen Gallery offers the context for this exploration to continue. Sound arts thus become an access point for listening as an activity, in which a shared process of education allows people to discover personal, artistic and scientific insights. Listening becomes a revolutionary act, a way to shape and change behaviours and society.