सुनते-सुनते: While Listening

I am seeking to realise creative public outcomes of more than 10 years of participatory practice as research into sound noise and listening in New Delhi. This project will contribute to a new discourse on the sonic environment in Hindi (with collaborators) and to a critique of Euro-centric sonic understanding of city spaces. I will organise and communicate practices and scores, developed alongside collaborators in Delhi over many years, in the form of an artists book made in dialogue with a local publication in Hindi, an audio exegesis, and a creative radio feature. Delhi Listening Group has worked to bring together Ankur Society’s social practices of listening, and experience in fostering written expression, with my experience and practices working artistically with sound in public space with many groups in diverse urban contexts into a set of methods for engaging with the sonic environment of Delhi that does not separate social and aesthetic approaches. We contend that increasing awareness of noise is also indicative of changes in listening practices and shifting tolerances. Listening based approaches to sound and noise take us past the "full-stop" of listening that the idea of "noise" presents us with, towards a better understanding of these sounds and our relationship with them. This in turn helps us understand the complex relationality of city spaces in ways that maps and plans never can. I will use this grant to compose volumes of text and audio recordings conducted during this listening centred creative research practice into print and audio publications and compositions.