Embodied Listening: exceeding the restrictions of visual perception

In an effort to move beyond representational modes of seeing and knowing, in this paper I explore how movement activates listening, and so expands the act of seeing through a process of embodiment and practice. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken for the production of the moving image work 'Between Two Suns', the aim of this paper is to articulate an idea of expanded forms of production that generate performative collaborations and improvisations beyond the camera frame. Through examining the methodological processes undertaken during fieldwork, this paper considers listening as a sensory experience of place that requires movement as a way to relate to other bodies. It contends that through the affective properties of sonic communication, we are able to engage in the world with a perspective that exceeds the restrictions of visual perception; demonstrating how sound draws attention to the entanglements of human and more-than-human forms of life through both movement and gesture. Listening is a form of sonic cognition and it produces a mode of knowledge that is both temporal and ephemeral, through a sensory reading with the world (Voegelin 2014). In this paper, I consider the influence of listening on looking as an embodied experience that requires creative gestures of movement as a way to make contact with otherwise unseen actions and ecologies within environments. By recounting the experiences of practice and process, I will illustrate how listening and performative movement open up a field of possibilities by destabilising the role of the observer through a connection to a larger world.