Meditations on Listening

For her, listening is about presence, movement, and a balance between art forms. With great artistic curiosity, she explores what it means to conduct: Can the role of the conductor be dance, performance – or conceptual art?

Through her art, she touches on themes such as mutual exchange, creative freedom, agency and control – as well as the conducting body as an expression and register of experience, in interplay with nature or with an orchestra.

Rønning works with listening as an expanded concept. Listening as presence, as balance in communication and exchange, as an artistic quality, and as an artistic process. Her conducting practice involves auditory listening, but also other forms of listening – bodily, spatial, visual, imaginary, and relational. She seeks to open up the traditional conductor role, both through her own creations and in collaboration with others.

This concert marks the conclusion of Halldis Rønning’s doctoral research in conducting at the Faculty of Performing Arts, University of Stavanger, and is performed in collaboration with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. The concert is curated by Rønning and features new works by Maja S.K. Ratkje, Hilmar Thordarson, and Halldis Rønning, works by Arvo Pärt and Pauline Hall, as well as video art by Anne-Marthe Dyvi, Thorbjörg Jonsdottir, and Halldis Rønning in collaboration with Eirik Aurlund Sæle.