Bristol Listening Circle

As the sun sets on the dusty Gloucester Road skyline and on a flickering, sweaty summer, we can look back contentedly on five evenings doing something defiant in its simplicity, simple in its defiance.  On Wednesday 20th of August we discussed ‘The Purpose of Art’ but, perhaps predictably, floated beyond ‘purpose’ into ponderings and pontifications on the nature, value, beauty, power structures and professions of ‘art’, from Van Gogh to Vin Diesel.    Here are some of the reflections we could (belatedly) recall from Wednesday: Is art necessarily political? Context and historical situatedness of art… pieces that require context and the constructs around those regarded as "beautiful", “masterpieces” outside their zeitgeist What will art of the future be like? The backlash against new movements and genres Art as a form to challenge the status quo, discourses on beauty, notions of reality and normativity. Dialogue between producer/artist and receiver/spectator Pretentiou...

Who’s Gonna Do the Dishes? Welcome back to our account of this week’s listening circle. We say ours because we acknowledge how everyone may remember each session differently, find other points more relevant or may have attributed varying meanings to the words shared in the circle. Every week, when we both try to list our recollection of the session, we encounter these discrepancies.  Perhaps this happens more than we think but we don’t tend to write down a shared reflection of a social event and attempt to agree on what is published. It has been an interesting practice to challenge assumptions, to listen even after the listening exercises have ended and to speak from an awareness that the aspiration for a neutral account of the events is a fallacy. Likewise, actively listening to everyone’s thoughts to remember them and write them down days later is honouring the individuality of every participant, the value of their contributions and the uniqueness of their experiences. The storie...

Reflections on the Reflections (Or: Some Not-Particularly-Original Bonus Content That Nobody Asked For)  By Caspar Montgomery Tuesday’s session was my favourite so far, a perfect atmosphere of openness, playfulness and sincerity. It was inevitable that we would wind down productive rabbit holes and collectively carve out only a few of the infinite aspects of what might be encompassed by ‘Us and Them’. But I think we were onto something, and the themes that sprung up that mighty fine evening have been chasing me ever since, especially in politics.  For instance, this was at the top of my YouTube feed the next day… … and this was in my inbox, regarding the counter-protest protecting immigrants from right-wing protestors, which took place earlier today. And when I arrived at said protest, I couldn’t shake off an icky sticky feeling, the words of a Listener on Tuesday ringing in my ears. This Listener had expressed a felt tension between, on the one hand, wanting to strengthen the...