We sit down in a circle. Ahead of us is a workshop with focus on Deep Listening. We slowly adjust to the topic of the day: listening. Tuning in. We prepare our minds and bodies to receive and respond. Outside it is late autumn, light is dimming early. We are a group of 20-25 people who have gathered in the Red Room at the Inter Arts Center in Malmö, Sweden. We are there to take part in a workshop on Deep Listening facilitated by two Deep Listening® tutors: Morten Svenstrup (DEN) and Ximena Alarcón-Díaz (COL).

Later, we are asked to walk as slow as we can around the room while listening. Very few sounds can be heard. Bodies moving across the room before we all gather in a circular formation in the middle of the room. This workshop is the beginning of the collaboration of this issue’s journal about listening.

Focusing on listening for an entire day is a challenging but rewarding experience, encouraging a deep and embodied attitude towards all sounds, movements and surroundings.

This issue of Matter Journal of Artistic Research in Performing Arts is dedicated to listening in artistic and pedagogical practices and contains a broad selection of approaches to listening. Opening the issue is Ximena Alarcón-Díaz’ with a sonic meditation in response to the world we live in. Listening to and through materials in the creative process is the focus of Jacob Remin’s sound piece. Polyvocal listening is discussed in Vanja Hamidi Isacsson’s article and conveyed into a choir piece for multiple queered voices in Sall Lam Toro’s text and sound contribution. Listening to experiences is what both Felicia Konrad and Iury Salustiano Trojaborg propose. They offer insightful personal accounts of listening to the heartbeat of trees and to the sounds of water. Lukas Quist Lund’s poem explores the performative potential of listening, while Morten Svenstrup elaborates in his article on the art of facilitating spaces for listening and Bureau for Listening offer a broad selection of listening services that can open new perspective to how listening and institutional practices can be intertwined. We dare you to listen!

The Editorial Team

Tanja Hylling Diers, Yann Coppier and Iury Salustiano Trojaborg

Download issue#5 (pdf)



Table of contents

American Dream
By Ximena Alarcón-Díaz

Listening as a Method for Composing Polyvocal Stage Text
By Vanja Hamidi Isacson

Water Stirs Our Grief – A Choir of Tears
By Sall Lam Toro

Listening as Institutional Practice: Towards an Institution of Attunement
By Bureau for Listening

To Not Know and To Listen
By Lukas Quist Lund

This Magical Gong
By Jacob Remin

Listening. Listening to. Listening through. Listening with.
By Felicia Konrad

A Box Full of Time and Sensuality – On how becoming conscious of framings can make a world of a difference
By Morten Svenstrup

The Sounds of Water
By Iury Salustiano Trojaborg


Copyright © 2026 the Authors
Cover photo: Iury Trojaborg
Graphic design by Jörgen Dahlqvist
Malmö Theatre Academy