The aim of the Beyond Listening symposium is to provide a transdisciplinary forum for the achievements in recent years and to foster further exchanges, communication and networking during the years to come. We pay special attention to the region of Central Europe, but the geopolitical range of its subjects remains open to the broader world.

How to escape from listening paradigms that are based on expansive, colonial, violent and extractionist approaches? What can we learn from current ethical and political applications of acoustic ecology, acoustic anthropology, or bioacoustics? What can sound artists, scholars, activists and listeners, do beyond simply witnessing another wave of reports on declining biodiversity and the ongoing collapse of our planet’s systems? How can this ever more tangible and multi-sensory experience on a planetary scale be addressed on a local and collective level, beyond the "act of listening"?

The importance of environmental issues, especially as they relate to sound pollution in Central Europe, in countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Austria, has for a long time been overlooked.

The gathering in Budapest is the fourth international event connected to the CENSE network. The Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies (CENSE) was established during an international conference held 2018 in Budapest. Since then, several other events and two further conferences have taken place: one in Ustí nad Labem, the Czech Republic Murmurans Mundus and one in Poland - The Second Life Of Recorded Sounds (on-line 2020). The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME), the main organizer and venue of the conference, is an eductional institution that systematically addresses issues of environmental sustainability.

Featured Keynote Speakers

• Gascia Ouzounian(UK)
• Budhaditya Chattopadhyay(NL)
• Jacek Smolicki(PL/SW)

Speakers and Presenters

Abby Lee Tee, Sam Auinger, Hannah Kemp-Welch, Grant Smith (Soundcamp cooperative), Kristine Diekman & Ben Pagac, Manja Ristić & Aleksandar Lazar, Liz K. Miller, Hanna Grześkiewicz, Julian Rieker, Ida Hiršenfelder, Ramon De Marco, Danny Clarke, Jan Solčáni, Eric Leonardson, Martin Heslop, Maja Bjelica, Dorota Blaszczak, OR poiesis (a.k.a. Petra Kapš), Melissa del Carmen Ernstberger & Luka Laval, Ari Koivumäki, Polina Katchenka, Bálint Kiss, Georgios Varoutsos, Christoph Brünggel, Arthur Enguehard & Gilles Malatray, Shluk (Sara Pinheiro et al), Guillaume Loizillon, Piotr Kędziora, Robin Parmar, Henry McPherson, Hugo Scurto, ooo collective (Eva Vozárová & Fero Király), Mary Edwards, Bea Targosz, Magdalena Manderlová & Michal Kindernay, Lorella Abenavoli & Arthur Enguehard, Ramon de Marco, Robbie Wing, Mári Mákó, Bálint Szabó, Július Fujak, Gabi Schaffner.

The program is subject to change.

Advisory board

• Jacek Smolicki(PL/SW)
• Anna Kvíčalová(CZ)
• Miloš Vojtěchovský(CZ)