Experiments in Listening is the name for a series of three week-long performative dialogues that took place in 2014 and 2015.
Monday 29 September - Friday 3 October 2014 Karen Christopher and Rajni Shah Backlit, Nottingham (as part of In Dialogue)
Monday 12 - Saturday 17 January 2015 Chris Goode and Rajni Shah Jerwood Space, London
Monday 9 - Friday 13 March 2015 Andy Smith and Rajni Shah Jack Hylton Room, Lancaster University, Lancaster
For each dialogue, Rajni invited another performance-maker who is also a friend to be in a room with her for a week. The invitation she made was to ‘explore the space between us as friends and performance-makers’. This invitation was made in order to explore a space of listening somewhere between the familiar and the performative.
Each residency was also accompanied by two sets of audiences: a live audience who were present for the final moments of the week, and a filmmaker who was present in whatever way they chose to be during the week-long dialogue. The resulting films by Lisa Cazzato-Vieyra, Griffyn Gilligan, and Jonathan Kemp are three distinctly personal responses to the week-long dialogues, capturing moments of laughter, intimacy, frustration, confrontation, silence, dance, and indeed love. There are occasional screenings of these films, however they are not available online as the hosting is critical.
Experiments in Listening was supported by: Arts Council England, Dance4, Backlit, InDialogue 2014, Jerwood Space, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Lancaster Arts