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Pauline Oliveros

 

In the excerpt from MFA-IA Fall Residency at Goddard College, Pauline Oliveros performs her well-known art of “deep listening“. The video is about 11 minutes long and shows two women, who are in a well with a ladder on the wall. During the video, the women climb the ladder up and down. Furthermore, three candles are placed in the middle of the well. The walls of the well are painted with graffiti. The overall setting of the recording is dark, overwhelming, and oppressive. It seems as if the two woman are filmed by another women. The two women are dancing in the video, walking around, and talking with each other.

Now the question arises what one can hear when watching the video? The main sounds one can hear are the dialogues between the two women one can see in the video and the other woman, who is recording the video. Their voices can be heard as their laughter. Furthermore, their dialogues are stressed out by the echo of their voices in the well. When only listening to the sounds and not watching the video, one might have the impression of being in the middle of the scenery in the well.  Still, I cannot hear what the actors in the video say but only hear their laughter. According to Liang Khong (2022), the distinction between hearing and listening was crucial for Oliveros.[1] “Hearing, she writes, ‘represents the primary sense organ - hearing happens involuntarily‘“, while listening happens voluntarily. Oliveros’ well-known art of  “deep-listening“ is clearly hearable in the video. Such “deep-listening“ is based on being fully concentrated on the sound and feeling the sound with all of your senses. Pauline Olivero’s composition is based on minimalism. In contrast to conventional and regular compositions, Olivero’s work does not contain any sounds of instruments or singing.

While listening to Olivero’s composition, I had very uncommon, heavy, and gloomy feelings. The feelings of the movement of the two women in the video arise the feeling of experiencing a horror movie at close quarters. For minute 7.34 on, a kind of holy music. This additional sound accentuates my gloomy impression even more. However, I have to admit that the experience of listening to Olivero’s composition, was a different experience. In contrast to other songs, one is not distracted by hundreds of impressions, caused by the interaction of instruments, technical sounds, and singing. To put it in a nutshell, I experienced Olivero’s composition as different and interesting, although it does not match the compositions of today’s artists and expectations.


[1] https://artreview.com/whats-the-point-of-deep-listening-pauline-oliveros/

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