Description
Listening is an active practice. It requires attention, presence, and attunement. It is also a form of intimacy: to listen to is to be an audience or a witness to another––or to many others. From ancient oral transmission traditions to podcasts and audioguides, from casual eavesdropping to careful diagnostics––of a patient for a doctor, of an engine for a mechanic––and from sermons to conflict mediation, listening pervades all aspects of society and often carries cultural, political, and ethical implications. The act of listening is also closely linked to technology. “We are not free to choose the ways we are being heard,” researcher and artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan points out. This Salon considers how and when; whom and what we choose to listen to; and what we hear when we do.
Together, we will ask: Does privileging hearing over other senses produce new modes of knowledge? What is a sonic register, and what information and affects does it communicate? What are we willingly or unwillingly tuning out even when we seem to be listening carefully? How do we approach the gap between listening and understanding? What is unlistenable? What changes, physiologically and psychologically, when we listen to music individually versus collectively? And recorded versus live? What can we glean from listening to and for the more-than-human? What are the sounds of climate change? And of contemporary warfare? How is listening essential to democracy? Can we be trained to become more generous listeners? How do we distinguish signal from noise?
Gila Ashtor is a practicing psychoanalyst and Professor of Clinical Psychoanalysis at Columbia University where she also teaches MFA courses on sexuality, culture, and writing. She is the author of two academic books—Homo Psyche and Exigent Psychoanalysis—as well as an experimental memoir, Aural History.
Kevin Beasley is an artist who lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include PROSCENIUM | Rebirth / Growth: The Watch / Harvest / Dormancy: On Reflection, Storm King Art Center, New York (2025); A body, revealed, Hill Art Foundation, New York (2022); and A view of a landscape, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2018).
Tina Campt is Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of Humanities, holding a joint appointment between the Department of Art and Archaeology and the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. She is the author of several books, including Image Matters (2012), Listening to Images (2017), and A Black Gaze (2021), that develop a distinct methodology that centers the sonic, haptic, and affective registers of images. Campt is the 2026-27 Scholar-in-Residence at MoMA.
Brian Hochman is Professor of American Studies and English at Georgetown University. His interests in American Studies and U.S. cultural history span a wide range of fields: 19th- and 20th-century American literature and culture; race and ethnicity; science and technology studies; surveillance studies; and the history of audiovisual media. He is the author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2022).
Liz Pelly is a writer based in New York. Her first book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award. Her byline has appeared at The Baffler, Guardian, Harper's, NPR, Financial Times, Pioneer Works Broadcast, and many other outlets. She currently co-hosts Critical Listening, a podcast about music and technology.
The presentations will be accompanied by the screening of a series of short videos cut specifically for Salon 60.
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The comments and opinions expressed in this video are those of the speakers alone, and do not represent the views of The Museum of Modern Art, its personnel, or any artist.
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