Listening across difference: letters towards a radical equality

3.00 – 4.30 PM

Laura Cull (UK/Netherlands), Rajni Shah (UK) Listening across difference: letters towards a radical equality 

Listening across difference: letters towards a radical equality.

This session will take the form of a hybrid presentation followed by a listening session. For the presentation, Laura will present live and Rajni will present online via Zoom. As per the abstract below, the lecture takes the form of a reading of an exchange of letters written by Rajni and Laura where they reflect on their collaboration on a research project concerned with the notion of “radical equality”. 

Rajni Shah is an artist whose practice is focused on listening and gathering as creative and political acts. At the Academy of Theatre and Dance, they are a tutor on the THIRD program – for artistic research in the 3rd cycle – and an associate researcher with the ATD Lectorate. Key projects—always created alongside and in collaboration with others—include hold each as we fall (1999), The Awkward Position (2003-2004), Mr Quiver (2005-2008), small gifts (2006-2008), Dinner with America (2007-2009), Glorious (2010-2012), Experiments in Listening (2014-2015), Lying Fallow (2014-2015), Song (2016), I don’t know how (to decolonize myself) (2018), Feminist Killjoys Reading Group (2016-2020) and Listening Tables (2019-2020). In 2021, Rajni published a monograph and series of zines as part of the Performance Philosophy Series, entitled Experiments in Listening.  

Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca is Lector and Head of DAS Graduate School at Academy of Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts in the Netherlands. Her current research includes the project, Performance Philosophy & Animals: Towards a Radical Equality – which asks how performance can contribute to more ethical ways of knowing non-human animals in the entangled contexts of climate crisis and social inequality.