Q-O2 in collaboration with Brandon LaBelle and Anna Raimondo organized a three-day series of collective research and experimentation, sound and listening in order to reflect upon the politics of space. This included drawing into play the key terms of “territoriality” and “invisibility”.

Dirty Ear Forum is an ongoing artistic platform for sonic research and practices initiated in 2013 by Brandon LaBelle, which aims to pose sound as a conceptual framework that allows for modes of collective work.

How might the spatial qualities and capacities of sound and listening allow for engaging a spatial politics of local environments?
If issues of marginality and belonging are understood spatially, in what way might sonic practices allow for socially engaged intervention?
Are there forms of collective agency to be discovered through sound’s invisibility?
How does recognition emerge through being audible yet unseen?
Can listening rework the conditions by which visibility performs?

Dirty Ear Forum worked through these questions within the context of Q-O2 in Brussels. This included experimenting with creative methods and material tactics; capturing and discussing sonic discourses; and mapping a set of reflections on local conditions. In addition, a daily radio stream organized in partnership with Gsara Association made public the working process, allowing for a performative framework.

This edition was organized by Brandon LaBelle and Anna Raimondo in collaboration with Q-O2 within the framework if the Interfaces Network, including the partnership of Gsara Asbl, FMDO and Saout Radio.

Daily radio tea time from Wednesday until Saturday at 16:00. The public presentation took place on Friday 15/2 18:00 at Q-O2.