Biography

Brandon LaBelle is an artist, writer and theorist working with sound culture, voice, listening and questions of agency. Guided by situated and collaborative methodologies, he develops artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, mostly working in public and with others. From gestures of intimacy and listening to critical festivity and experimental pedagogy, his practice aligns itself with a politics and poetics of radical hospitality. This leads to performative installations, poetic theater, storytelling, and research actions aimed at forms of experimental community making, as well as extra-institutional initiatives, including The Listening Biennial and Academy which he currently directs. He is also currently working as a research fellow at the National Hellenic Research Foundation for the ERC project MUTE (Soundscapes of Trauma: Music, Sound, and the Ethics of Witnessing).

His work has been presented at Kunsthall 3,14, Bergen (2023), Struer Tracks sound art biennial, Denmark (2021), Club Transmediale, Berlin (2019), Kunsthall 3,14, Bergen (2018), La Tabacalera, Madrid (2017), Documenta 14, Athens (2017), South London Gallery (2016), Tel Aviv University Art Gallery (2015), Marrakech Biennial (parallel project), 2014, General Public, Berlin (2013), The Whitney Museum, NY (2012), Image Music Text, London (2011), Sonic Acts, Amsterdam (2010), A/V Festival, Newcastle (2008, 2010), Tramway, Glasgow (2010), Museums Quartier/Tonspur, Vienna (2009), 7th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Allegro (2009), Center for Cultural Decontamination, Belgrade (2009), Casa Vecina, Mexico City (2008), Fear of the Known, Cape Town (2008), Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2003, 2007), Ybakatu Gallery, Curitiba (2003, 2006, 2009), Singuhr Gallery, Berlin (2004), and ICC, Tokyo (2000). He regularly produces works for radio, notably Documenta / Savvy Funk, Berlin (2017), Radio Reina Sofia (2016), Kunstradio in Vienna (1999, 2001, 2007, 2009, 2021-22) and Deutschland Radio (2009).

He is the author of Dreamtime X (2022), Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity, and the Work of Reorientation (2021), The Other Citizen (2020), Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance (2018), Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary (2014), Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian (2012), Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life (2019; 2010), and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2015; 2006).

He is also the founding editor of Errant Bodies Press, Berlin, which develops publishing projects in collaboration with a diversity of authors and artists. In 2021 he initiated The Listening Biennial, and related Listening Academy, in collaboration with friends and colleagues, focusing on establishing a global network of participating artists, collectives, and organizations to work together on listening as a transformative practice. In addition, he is currently leading the artistic research project, Communities in Movement, (originally supported by the Norwegian Artistic Research program), in collaboration with a range of partners, including Klub Mama Zagreb, AMEE Madrid, Sala 603 Curitiba, and Quote-Unquote, Bucharest.

He received a Masters degree from Cal Arts, Los Angeles in 1998, and completed his PhD at the London Consortium in 2005. Following his doctoral work he undertook post-doctoral research at the University of Copenhagen from 2006 to 2009, in Modern Culture and Sound Studies. In 2008-09 he worked as Guest Professor at the Copenhagen Art Academy and at the Free University in Berlin, holding seminars on acoustic territories, spatial practice, and the male voice. Between 2011 and 2022 he worked as a Professor at The Art Academy –- Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen, Norway. From 2012-16 he organized The Invisible Seminar addressing questions of appearance, recognition, and practices of the unseen, which resulted in a number of related exhibitions and publications. In 2014-16 he initiated the first edition of The Living School, an experimental pedagogical project in collaboration with the South London Gallery, as well as The Imaginary Republic, a collaborative framework focusing on art, imaginary power, and practices of social solidarity. Throughout 2021-2023, he also organized The Pirate Academy, facilitating an alternative learning space guided by party practices.