Home
Home
Home
Home
    • DE
    • EN
  • Menu
  1. Studyprojects
  2. /

Can We Really Hear Each Other?

Listening with care: Curatorial research beyond the visual

Master Cultural Critique - Curatorial Studies

Can We Really Hear Each Other?, Pauline Brämer, Zürcher Hochschule der Künste

The thesis explores sound as a political and cultural element in modern exhibition practices, researching how we can listen as a curatorial method based on care instead of extraction. It looks at how sound interacts with and builds our understanding of space, time, embodiment, and the relationship between listeners. Departing from a critique of visual-culture-centered exhibition practices in Western art institutions, it develops a framework for listening with care as a relational, ethical, and situated practice. Two case studies are presented: MADEYOULOOK's 'Mafolofolo: a place of recovery', documenta fifteen (2022), and sound-based practice at the Venice Biennale (2024). The thesis discusses the theoretical underpinnings of listening with care, while an in-depth listening analysis explores modes of perception and understanding. It also examines how listening practices are affected by a sonic color line, silence, and exclusion. The research maintains that listening is not a passive act but an engaged, embodied, collective and political act that unfolds across multiple senses and temporalities, and extends beyond normative Western notions of hearing to include more-than-human relations. It foregrounds vulnerability and, in the conclusion, proposes that the concept of listening with care be understood as both a method of research and a way of living that acknowledges the nuance, opacity, and limitations of what can be understood.

Details

  • Discipline

    Kunstvermittlung

  • Project Type

    Abschlussarbeit

  • Field of Study

    Master Cultural Critique - Curatorial Studies

  • Authors

    Pauline Brämer

  • Date

    2026