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Tele-Phonies: Listening at a Distance in the Arts and Auditory Cultures

Télé-phonies : l’écoute à distance dans les arts et les cultures auditives

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Published on Wednesday, October 01, 2025

Abstract

Drawing from the hypothesis of an entanglement between auditory cultures, regimes of perception, and techniques of listening, the study day Tele-Phonies proposes to analyze the arts and cultures of listening through the plural notion of distance. The aim is to consider not only telephone and radio networks, but also a broader set of mediated practices of listening at a distance—within or on the margins of these networks—in order to grasp their impact on the sonic arts and auditory cultures.

Announcement

Argument

The invention of the telephone, the electric telegraph, and the radio profoundly transformed the modalities of listening. These technologies fostered physiological approaches, refined the measurement of sound phenomena, and shaped new auditory skills. They inscribed listening as both a bodily and social practice, while reconfiguring space and producing specific auditory regimes. Tools of sound reproduction and transmission thus left their mark on the arts and auditory cultures by linking them to complex systems of technological mediation and social and aesthetic interaction.

Drawing from the hypothesis of an entanglement between auditory cultures, regimes of perception, and techniques of listening, the study day Tele-Phonies proposes to analyze the arts and cultures of listening through the plural notion of distance. The aim is to consider not only telephone and radio networks, but also a broader set of mediated practices of listening at a distance—within or on the margins of these networks—in order to grasp their impact on the sonic arts and auditory cultures.

Listening always presupposes a distance—material, metaphorical, geographical, temporal, or social. Materially, this distance is embodied in technical infrastructures, which alter auditory experience and redefine geographical, cultural, or attentional remoteness. These sonic mediations can bring about profound spatial and social reconfigurations, delineating genuine territories of listening. Distance also refers to inequalities of access to technologies, to questions related to disability, or to contrasts between auditory cultures.

Programme

8 octobre

14h30 Accueil

  • 14h45 Pascal Rousseau (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Intervention inaugurale

15h Introduction

PANEL 1

  • 15h20 Daniele Balit (Institut supérieur des Beaux-Arts, Besançon), Voix étouffées, voix distantes. Écoute ventriloque et politiques de la preuve

  • 15h50 André Lange (histv.net), Une archéologie du porte-voix        

16h20 Pause

PANEL 2

  • 16h40 Rebecca John (Leuphana University Lüneburg), Bridging Distance and Difference via Listening? Robert Lachmann’s “Oriental Radio” and Jumana Manna’s Artistic Response

  • 17h10 Jasmine Goll (Universität Bern), (Dis)Connected by Wire: Liveness and Distance in Late Nineteenth-Century Telephonic Music Listening

17h40 Pause

KEYNOTE

  • 18h Mara Mills (New York University) Speed Listening By Telephone

9 octobre

9h30 Accueil

9h40 Introduction

PANEL 3 

  • 10h Benoît Turquety (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis) Sur le fil : distances télé-phoniques et enregistreurs autonomes

  • 10h30 Julie Champion et Marie Vicet (Musée national d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou), Désorientation et brouillage du signal dans « Les Immatériaux » : l’écoute à l’ère postmoderne

  • 11h Anne Zeitz (Université Rennes 2) ‘‘You only notice the wind when something is in the air’’ : Formes d’écoute météorologique de Henry David Thoreau à Lawrence Abu Hamdan

11h30 Pause

PANEL 4

  • 14h Matthieu Saladin (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), ‘Patterns within air’’ : l’écoute de l’inaudible dans la musique longue distance de Maryanne Amacher

  • 14h30 Francesco Spampinato (Università di Bologna), A Fractured Conversation: Christian Marclay’s Telephones, the Post-Medium Condition and the Advent of Mobile Communication in the 1990s

  • 15h Nicolas Ballet (Musée national d’Art Moderne - Centre Pompidou), Hantologie, lost media et liminal spaces : pour une exploration des non-lieux sonores

15h30 Conclusion        

Places

  • Salle Vasari - Institut national d’histoire de l’art INHA Galerie Colbert, 6 rue des Petits Champs
    Paris, France (75)

Event attendance modalities

Hybrid event (on site and online)


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, October 08, 2025
  • Thursday, October 09, 2025

Keywords

  • étude sonore, histoire de l'art, STS, étude de médias, archéologie des médias, étude culturelle

Contact(s)

  • Léa Dreyer
    courriel : imago [dot] tele [dot] visions [at] gmail [dot] com

Information source

  • Léa Dreyer
    courriel : imago [dot] tele [dot] visions [at] gmail [dot] com

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Tele-Phonies: Listening at a Distance in the Arts and Auditory Cultures », Study days, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, October 01, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14tl3

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