Colophon

Horizontal Listening is a three-act audiovisual essay based on the texts in Body, Listening and Finitude. It begins with a body laid low by pain, without rest or sleep, finding consolation in repetitive, microtonal music built from minimal variations. From that position, the horizon dissolves and listening descends towards previously unknown places. Listening may seem to leave no trace, yet it leaves an imprint.

The body appears as a scene open to the world: it falls, sways, inclines, trembles and remains exposed to forces that exceed thought. Every body is choreographed at once by gravity and by pain. In mourning, words and bodies incline before absence. Tears fall from eyes that do not merely look at the world but weep for it, as though horizontally listening to the world and to existence.

The three acts move through this relationship between pain, body, listening, word and disappearance. Repetition alters the experience of time; gesture prolongs what language cannot reach; the word draws close to stammering and to silence. Horizontal music accompanies this movement and attends to life as it changes, is lost and resonates once more.