23–24 March 2024
eavesdropping returns to Cafe OTO for another four-day festival, curated by Juliet Fraser, which includes four evening double-bill events and a weekend-long forum of talks, roundtables and provocations. We hope to stimulate your ears and your imagination by presenting new work by eight artists working at the experimental fringes of a variety of genres. The programming within each set is artist-led: repertoire is only announced on the night.
During this year’s forum we will explore the topic ‘Experiments in Failure’. Weighty talks given by guest speakers Soosan Lolavar and lisa minerva luxx sit alongside shorter provocations, and the programme also includes a roundtable on contemporary opera and a special screening of Daniel Weintraub's documentary 'Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros'. The vibe is low-key and friendly, whilst definitely being thought-provoking.
- Click here to download the full Forum programme (pdf)
eavesdropping
eavesdropping is a platform for the sharing of new music and new ways of thinking about music. Excited by experimentalism, we create opportunities for artists and audiences to practise engaged listening and compassionate debate. Our activity includes a festival, a forum, a podcast, and training and development workshops. Our mission is to build community through an ethics of curiosity and care, in the belief that ripples do make waves.
https://www.eavesdropping.london
Dr SOOSAN LOLAVAR is a British Iranian composer whose music draws on ideas from western and Iranian traditions. Despite these influences, her music moves far beyond metaphors of ‘fusion’ or assumptions of a binary opposition between east and west. Instead, she aims for a deeper, lifelong conversation between these musical traditions wherein her lifetime of personal experience, creative work and academic writing intertwine to produce something uniquely diasporic. In essence she aims to create work which speaks to the experience of living in the in-between. She often devises unique tuning systems for her work with the help of the infinite capabilities of the santoor. In 2023 she was selected to represent the British delegation at the ISCM World Music Days Festival in South Africa, released an album of solo violin music on all that dust and published a book with Routledge exploring arts-practice as a means for theorising diaspora.
lisa minerva luxx is an award-winning poet, playwright, political activist and essayist of British Syrian heritage. In 2021 luxx released Fetch Your Mother’s Heart, an innovative and critically acclaimed poetry collection. They have written three verse plays including what the dog said to the harvest (an experimental opera-installation-performance for decolonial climate justice), and their Channel 4 short film Lesbian. won five awards including Best LGBTQ short at Independent Shorts Awards. They are a Gold certified lyricist, signed to Maison Arts record label in LA. In 2020, luxx founded Nehna Hon, an anti-racist collective in Beirut to set-up free daycare, job support, rent and food assistance plus urgent action for victims of the kafala system (human trafficking and slave trade). Before that they were co-founder of eLaa Beirut, an international organisation of mental health professionals; the organisation supported mental health services in Lebanon after the Beirut Blast. They are also an active part of Palestine Action in the UK.
