Tacet, or the Cochlear Vertigo— a project initiated in 2013—arose out of our encounter and experience with a school for deaf and hard of hearing children in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). The project aims to offer new dimensions to listening by exploring sound perception among profoundly deaf persons. What Now?: The Politics of Listening, traces the history of our research through written accounts and interviews, reproductions of texts and commissions, as well as artworks designed for online exhibition. The work around What Now?: The Politics of Listening has been regularly expanded and concluded with an exhibition in 2016 at Bergen Assembly (Norway). 

Over the course of our research two artistic productions were developed: a choreographic work by Noé Soulier and Jeffrey Mansfield, and a sound installation by Tarek Atoui. The Research group for this inquiry is Bassem Abdel Ghaffar, Tarek Atoui, Hansel Bauman, Desiree Heiss, Wendy Jacob, Jeffrey Mansfield, Noé Soulier, Inigo Wilkins.

[Many Rounds To Reach The Sounds That Are Listened To But Not Perceived]

The cochlea is the auditory portion of the inner ear. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.5 turns around its axis, the modiolus. A core component of the cochlea is the organ of Corti, the sensory organ of hearing, which is distributed along the partition separating fluid chambers in the coiled tapered tube of the cochlea. The name is derived from the Latin for snail shell, which in turn is from the Greek κοχλίας (snail, screw), from κόχλος (spiral shell) in reference to its coiled shape; the cochlea is coiled in mammals with the exception of monotremes¹.

[From Hearing To Listening]

The hearing range of the human ear is generally situated between 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, while, for instance, dogs, cats and dolphins can perceive ultrasounds up to 45,000, 65,000 and 500,000 Hz respectively. Among ideally-abled humans, this function is principally fulfilled by the cochlea. Deafness is described as “total” when the cochlea perceives no sound at all, and as “profound” when, for example, the cochlear only picks up the sound of a road drill; deafness is termed “severe” when the cochlea only perceives the sound of a noisy street, and, correspondingly, “moderate” for a loud conversation, and “mild” for an average conversation². 5 per cent of the world population—ie, 328 million adults (and about half of the over 65s population) and 32 million children—are affected by at least mild deafness³. About 200,000 people in France are profoundly deaf, and 800,000 people are severely to profoundly deaf in the UK (there are no available global statistics).The deaf population, which was for a long time ostracised, has developed a particular culture centred around sign language, in reaction to the predominance of orality in communication (even though sign language, and, as demonstrated more recently, vibrations, are among“ the easiest to learn, most effective and precise forms of communication we have).

Although now viewed in a favourable light, the way these two forms of deaf perception engage the body are at odds with most social conventions for they involve two taboos—gesticulation and enjoyment. Sound as perceived by profoundly deaf persons is not concentrated in the cochlear spiral. Instead, its vibrations are perceived throughout the body. The same part of the brain, the auditory cortex, is activated when we listen and when we perceive vibrations. Deaf persons also develop myriad techniques to form speculations on a sound environment that may be inaccessible to them through hearing but can be deduced via visual signs and knowledge of context. This extension of the hearing capacity, which links hearing to touch and sight, allows us to problematise the modern, mentalist conception of hearing, restricted and reduced to the head, which perpetuates the Aristotelian mind-body dichotomy. When described from a deaf-world perspective, listening is the ability to experience and anticipate sound through hearing, touch, and sight.

Far from seeking to rework classic conceptions of listening, our research is grounded in a conception of listening as pertaining to a composition through between various senses that make up an ecosystem—a perspective that envisions continuities between physically perceived sound and its virtual forms, new articulations between the public and private sphere and new forms of communication. This description can provide the basis on which the traditionally separate deaf and hearing institutions can configure ways of connecting (at least partially)⁴. In other words, our research explores the extent to which a sound can be perceived and the political representations potentially opened up by this diversity of listening modes.

[Method]

I grant that this title is applicable equally to the large number of those who speak without understanding, and the small number of those who understand without speaking, as to the very small number of those who speak and understand, and for whose special use my letter is intended⁵. As the Denis Diderot quotation above explains, our research has not been conducted for nor exclusively by members of the deaf community. We believe that community empowerment develops by experimenting with the interplay between the community’s own political representation and that of outside actors nonetheless sufficiently tied to the community to be able to speak on and in its behalf. If these ties are strong enough they enable new communities to emerge while at the same time reinforcing the original community. The project grew out of our encounters and experiences with various organisations and educational institutions devoted to the deaf community, and it began to take shape around our observations concerning the role of sound in this interplay of political representations. Often out of ignorance, but sometimes purposefully in order to reinforce the image of an isolated community, the world of deafness tends to be associated with silence.

The title of our inquiry, “Tacet” (a reference to John Cage’s works on silence), presents silence as a disposition allowing access to the lived but unperceived dimensions of sound. Deaf artists often engage with sound through synesthetic operations that make sound perceptible through visual translation. The essay will present a selection of these works that are part of an international movement employing highly sophisticated practices but whose history has yet to be written. Among the hearing population, two caricatural extremes tend to prevail: certain scientists apprehend deafness as a disability that must be compensated for through technology; the polar opposite position held by certain artists regards deafness as the development of abilities that give access to extraordinary dimensions of perception. This tendency links up with certain positions held by members of the deaf community who defend a form of communication that goes beyond oral language. The focus of our research was gradually defined by these various approaches to sound. We conducted our inquiry from February 2012 to April 2014. The various stages of research ultimately brought together researchers hailing from areas as diverse as sound studies, deaf studies, sound art, neurology, architecture, translation, design, literature, music, sound engineering, and the visual arts—all involved, to varying degrees, in one or several of the research phases. Starting from a specific experience in a particular context, our field of research has gradually broadened, seeking to reach dimensions not mutually commensurable, whose contradiction might prove fruitful and ultimately foster a new description of listening (at least the hallucination of the different dimensions of the issue).

In this way, the title of our study, “The Cochlear Vertigo”, points both to the spiral-shaped portion of the auditory system and to the winding path of our research. The piece by Aurélien Gamboni and Sandrine Teixido, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories A Descent into the Maelström, 1841, also uses this motif to account for the modes of attention required to engage with complexity⁶. Gabriel Lester has also revealed that he uses this strategy to better apprehend a context when he embarks on a new project. We established a collective whose structure is specific to the research undertaken and goes against the grain of several conventional ideas concerning collaboration. In this way, collaborators are not required to meet an equal level of involvement, nor does the collective impose an equal balance in its hybridisation of practices—principles often considered the only way to make a project truly collective and to represent the common of a community in the making. Similarly, decisions regarding the structure of our inquiries are not subjected to the logistics of collective decision-making as all major choices regarding procedures and project orientation are ultimately made by Council. Finally, the structure of the collective is such that not every action carried out, however technical, is necessarily apprehended as an opportunity for building the collective. In this way, we have employed various forms of delegation in the course of our research.

[The Structure Of What Now?: The Politics of Listening]

The essay establishes a picture of the artistic and scientific treatment of sound perception among the deaf community (through reproductions of texts, the commissioning and presentation of artworks) and documents various experimentations conducted over the course of the inquiry. It is structured around six sections:

The INTRODUCTION presents the stakes of the inquiry and its process, through narrative, data visualisation and a written fieldwork account.

TOUCH unfolds different dimensions of our relationship to touch: enjoyment, raw perception and the link between touch and listening.

INDIRECT PERCEPTIONS explores the techniques employed for perceiving the indirect signs of a sonic activity and the consequences of the continuity between perceptions and virtualities in developing modes of attention necessary for grasping complexity.

GRAMMARS explores sound expression through gesture in sign language, linguistics, and choreography.

EXTENSIONS returns to the debate surrounding cochlear implants and broadens it by attending to the historical relationships between the deaf community and technology.

REPRESENTATIONS presents the issues and implications of an artistic and political representation of disability.In addition to this, two artistic productions emerged from our research—a choreography by Noé Soulier and Jeffrey Mansfield, and a sound installation by Tarek Atoui (both to be presented in 2016).

[Council]

A council practices the art of assembling people in order to decide how to act for themselves and for those they represent. Councils are common to different cultures around the world, and are practiced at different levels of society—the family, trade unions, states, militant groups, businesses, and religious communities. Shared by all, council is an activity from which may emerge new forms of political representation. Founded in 2013 by Grégory Castéra and Sandra Terdjman, and animated by a network linked to the arts, science, and social engagement, Council develops an artistic institution born out of the art of council. Today, Council brings together artistic research laboratory (the inquiries), a programme for the production of artworks, and a fellowship. Introducing the arts in domains that do not fully recognise its legitimacy, composing the arts with sciences and civil society, and staging new forms of council: Council tests the hypothesis that the evolution of political representation implicates aesthetic operations. Council acts in the long term and on an international scale, modulating its structure according to the necessities of its activity. In accordance with these conditions, Council seeks to observe situations where human nature is re-examined, and to experiment with radical alterity—“the way I do not understand the other is different from the way he does not understand me”.