by PAN-PAN Kolektiva

We must develop new modes of listening in the traumatic spaces of the pandemic. The question for us is: do we have the necessary tools to listen to each other, or do we need to create new tools, attuned to the effects of COVID-19? We understand Post-traumatic Listening (PTL) as an ungrounded form of listening that relegates our individual subject positions in order to collectivise our shared wounded experiences.

Pay Attention Now

PAN-PAN is the international standard urgency signal, meaning Pay Attention Now. Although PAN-PAN does not denote immediate danger, it is used in navigation and flights to indicate situations that may become truly dangerous. We have adopted this signal as our name since the current COVID-19 crisis is ‘truly dangerous’, deeply affecting our way of perceiving and thinking.

Fernando Vizcaíno, leader of anti-mask movement in Madrid and former 9/11 conspirationist performing acroyoga. (Vizcaino, 2016) [1].

What is this mess?

We feel compelled to try to understand this mess. In recent months, we have found some strange cultural manifestations with even stranger connections: Neo-Nazi ‘hippies’ and Hare Krishnas trying to take over Germany’s Reichstag; a police association agitating for freedom and diversity in Spain; and finally — perhaps most extremely — the QAnon movement taking Trump as their God savior against the ‘cannibalist’ elite. We are witnessing increasingly disorientating meetings between new age and mindfulness spiritualists and paranoid conspiracy groups (Anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-G5, anti-semites), in what has been already termed conspiritualism [2].

Notwithstanding our problems with Western Modernity, we did not anticipate Neo-Nazi’s proclaiming peace with flower power [3]. Far from a coherent critique of modernity, we see these bizarre manifestations as indicators of an increasing political polarization. From where is this anti-rational turn coming? Why are we looking for comfort in practices of self-care and self-realisation [4]?

Neo-Nazi forming a ‘heart sign’ with her fingers during the demonstration in front of Germany’s Reichstag in Berlin. (Etter, 2020) [5].

The Seeds of Unrest

To begin, we might identify the psychological effects of our sustained precariousness. In Spain, our immediate context, the 2008 financial crisis coupled with political corruption led to the enforcement of harsh austerity. The Spanish population has now been suffering cutbacks in healthcare, education and culture for the last decade. COVID-19 has subjected hard-line lockdown measures to a defenceless population facing a healthcare crisis. These inter-linked crises are systemic; the old same story of neo-liberal production of debt and political corruption that we have been living through, across different countries around the world. In cultural sectors, instability is so common that the colloquial way to name the informal economy is a music metaphor: the Gig Economy. In the context of ongoing crises, we are forced into permanent self-entrepreneurship.

This constant instability, together with solitude experienced by workers, are crucial factors in the contemporary prevalence of depression and anxiety, among other pathologies and disorders. Instead of bringing us closer, this crisis amplifies our alienation. Taking pills does not address the cause, and the turn to self-care is not much better. There has been a lot of ‘self-whatever’ going on lately: self-employment, self-realisation, self-care, self-discipline… etc. The growing self-industry is no accident, corporations have embraced this turn, supporting workers to improve themselves, to meditate and exercise their ‘way to enlightenment’ [6]. We have the feeling — not so deep inside — that pills, self-care and regular exercise will not eradicate the depression and anxiety caused by the stress of this moment.

Contemporary capitalism and its surveillance mechanisms — the algorithmic filter bubbles of YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, or Deliveroo — enlarge the gap between one person and another [7]. Platform Capitalism is a sophisticated update of the ‘gig economy’. Hence, a growing part of the population is cornered by material and psychological instability, gradually losing contact with others. For example, those working within these platforms have distributed time schedules which make it impossible not only to meet other workers to organise, but also to socialise. This double atomisation poses problems both in the private and public sphere. On the one hand these conditions make organising and collective bargaining almost impossible. On the other, outside of work, in private spheres, our common references become individualised through our consumer tastes, as if we were zombies wanting only to get through the last two hours of the day, pacified with easy entertainment.

Jake Angeli, Self Initiated Shaman, Energetic Healer, Ordained Minister, ‘Yellowstone Wolf’’ and pro QAnon protester at US Senate 6 January 2021. (Balce Ceneta M. / Associated Press, 2021) [8].

The Spiritual Turn

Simultaneously, many people are turning towards practices that emerge out of Western fascinations with Asian spirituality. In the realm of experimental music, this is crucially linked to John Cage, for whom Zen Buddhism was a deep influence, something he promoted to students at Black Mountain College in the 1950’s. Fred Turner points out how Stewart Brand, a crucial originator of Silicon Valley technoculture was influenced by the practices of Cage, Rauschenberg, Kaprow, and their happenings [9]. The spiritual / Eastern philosophy turn within experimental music is also evident in composers such as Pauline Oliveros and LaMonte Young. Recently we hear it making a comeback in New Age and ambient music, and music therapy [10], with the revival, for instance, of classic ambient musicians such as Greg Davis or Iasos [11], and the emergence of younger ones with a style inflected by ‘precarity and political turmoil’ [12]. Over the last few years, this revival has expanded to big festival programmes and cultural institutions such as ZKM, in Karlsruhe Germany that programmed an online Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditation [13]. Or Unsound Festival from Krakow, Poland that in October 2020 presented the North American artist Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon) Online Deep Listening Meditation and Online Laughter Meditation [14].

A Spanish police officer meditating against the government in a YouTube video entitled ‘They don’t pay you to think’. (Vescovacci, 2020) [15].

This ‘oriental’ turn is not only an artworld phenomena, but has also been deployed more broadly during the pandemic. For example, philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han recognises the disciplinarian roots of Taoism in the way AI technologies have been applied in countries including China and South Korea in the pandemic context. [16]. Slavoj Žižek has described this tendency as ‘Western Buddhism’; a ‘remedy’ against stressful tension resulting from capitalist dynamics, and the global capitalist ideology itself. [17]. It is precisely, in their instrumentalisation as remedy, cure or treatment, that we perceive self-care practices to be reappropriated by the logic of capital; as forces which mitigate, and thus further enable, the effects of precariousness, similarly to the aforementioned pharmacologisation of depression and anxiety.

Post-traumatic Listening (PTL)

Historically ‘collective trauma’ describes the psychological state of an entire society that witnesses a traumatic event. Here we are reminded of Frantz Fanon’s account of collective trauma for Algerians exposed to the horrors of the French colonial project. Fanon suggested that a way to deal with trauma is to engage in collective struggle for liberation [18]. While circumstances are now different, the broad social impact and consequence of COVID-19 could be considered as a mass, durational, traumatic event. We suggest that our forms of listening are strongly altered under current conditions, and that we need to understand these changes.

Following Freud, we describe as a ‘traumatic’ event any stimulation from the outside that is too powerful for our defense mechanisms, and therefore cannot be articulated in language. Our relation to the word is changing, and everyday it feels as if it is becoming more unreal, which produces more anxiety. A recent online survey of almost 3,500 people in Spain found increased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, 15.8%), depression (18.7%), and anxiety (21.6%), with loneliness the strongest predictor of psychological symptoms after COVID-19 [19]. There are already publications warning that COVID-19 can generate neuropsychological deficits, and that survivors of the virus can easily develop PTSD [20]. What is increasingly clear is that anxiety is here to stay, and that COVID-19’s consequences are impacting both our economic and social realities.

‘Being mindful and present in the moment is harder than ever, and attending a festival such as Unsound, overflowing with events, doesn’t necessarily help.’ During Unsound 2018 the organization offered daily meditation sessions as part of the festival [21].

Anxiety, for Lacan, is symptomatic of a subject not at home with their subjectivity, having lost their reference points. Anxiety has no relation to symbolisation, and because of this, cannot be mediated. It is simultaneously non-imagined and not-ruled, and has no object which can be dealt with. A traumatic event is connected to anxiety, in the sense that it is a meaningless experience, literally an experience without sense. The subject recalls the experience but cannot form an objective account of it. Literally, we know that specific symptoms of COVID-19, like loss of smell and brain-fog, are difficult to fully describe; we struggle to find the words. ‘Yesterday I minced six cloves for the potion that my dear friend Sol ordered me to take, mixed with honey, ginger and lemon. I could not smell anything in my fingers” [22]. People who have contracted COVID-19 relate that their exhaustion is accelerated to the point of symptoms resembling derealisation or depersonalisation disorder. Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar, a 36 year-old Australian, relates, for instance: ‘When I get tired it becomes much worse and sometimes all I can do is lay in bed and watch TV… I feel like a shadow of my former self. I am not living right now, I am simply existing’ [23].

Taking these psychosomatic dimensions into account, we propose Post-traumatic Listening (PTL) as listening informed by trauma’s gap in the symbolic realm. We have found that practices of mindfulness produce an illusion of coherence, but do not take into consideration the causes of problems, the gaps mentioned above. Where these practices address ‘the gap’, they do so at an individual level, making it impossible for a collective reckoning with trauma. By sharing the lack of articulation at the root of anxiety, Post-traumatic Listening is listening at the edge of signification, expressing symptoms, doubts and fragile moments of anxiety without the illusion of coherence. Post-traumatic Listening is listening to structural anxiety in an attempt to cope with unprecedented times. By acknowledging its ambitious task, PTL begins in the most humble way, by trying to offset our prejudices.

Unprejudiced Listening

Through ‘unprejudiced listening’, we open ourselves to the fragility of different experiences, and also the mechanisms that people use to process this fragility. We developed the concept of unprejudiced listening in order to deal with our own prejudices towards certain ‘spiritual practices’. We know that we need to understand and engage, without being too judgemental, with these new unfamiliar territories, acknowledging our conflicting emotions and thoughts. The way in which many people are reacting to the pandemic — with conspiracy theories, right-wing ideologies, forms of denial and escapism — reinforces our sense of the need to suspend some of our assumptions, our consensus realities. Only then we will be able to listen and comprehend the complexities of our shared situation.

PTL in Practice

Since 11 March 2020, we have been meeting via video-conference to share our thoughts, and feelings of disbelief, sadness and grief. We have also laughed a lot, and given mutual support. Our conversations have been crucial in keeping our morale up. We knew it was necessary to share our concerns and research with others, and so decided to form a collective experimental research project, inviting people from sound activism, experimental music and dance communities, and from locations including Madrid, Berlin, and Barcelona.

Pan Pan Kolektiva meeting at Cadalso de los Vidrios, Madrid 4 September 2020.

OFrom 3–6 September 2020, we met following the announcement of pandemic social regulations in Cadalso de los Vidrios, a small mountain town in the Madrid region. Our agenda was to develop tools for listening, to respond to ‘silencing’ [24], to the restricted rights of expression caused by confinement, and to the silence left by the death of loved ones from COVID-19 [25]. We wanted to produce listening methodologies to help us to think about, and begin to transgress borders, perceptive and physical, by sharing experiences and grief.

As an example, the first Post-traumatic Listening exercise we attempted was as follows: we shared our experiences of lockdown in an unprejudiced way with an emphasis on what we saw as problematic elements, and how they affected us. Each of us described the negative consequences of the pandemic in an honest and sincere way. We listened with respect and kindness, acknowledging the heightened sensitivity that comes with living in a brutalised society. For us, the point was to develop the sensibility necessary to be receptive to difficult circumstances without putting up protective shields. This first exercise set a decisive tone for the rest of the weekend. There were no artist / audience boundaries, nor the usual theatrical connotations or props of collective ‘performance’. We all were in the same boat from which to develop a common listening practice based on trust and mutual respect. Elements of the exercises were presented (from the original "we will present", editor's note) during a public event on 23 January 2021 at Museo Reina Sofía, in Madrid [26]. Our reference points draw from existing examples, for instance, those of sound activists Ultra-Red, whose active listening protocols were developed after the AIDS epidemic, and later appropriated by a range of agents [27].

The Conclusion is Just the Beginning

For Prentis Hemphill, ‘Trauma is inherent in life, and oppression is the organisation and distribution of that trauma’. Through this collective, it is crucial for us to come together, in one way or another, physically or digitally, to share our experiences of isolation during COVID-19 confinement and lockdown. The politicisation of the collective trauma that we are going through is a necessary strategy to counter the individual exercises of self-care that ultimately work to enable the status quo. Instead of spiritual escapism, we strive towards collective self-consciousness. Instead of connecting to the cosmos, we turn to each other to understand socioeconomic inequalities, and hierarchical oppressive power structures. Following writer and activist Prentis Hemphill, we understand trauma as a somatic response to oppression that has an inherently political dimension.

Many of our responses to the pandemic have been reactive rather than proactive, making us less connected to each other. Applying PTL, unprejudiced and ‘radical listening’ [28] as a social and activist praxis is no longer just an option, but an urgent necessity. Let’s allow ourselves acts of resilience, of unprejudiced listening, to share our embodied social wounds. We can’t imagine all the traumatic dimensions of our present situation, made worse by self-regulation, state oppression, precarity and media overdose. We are aware that there are emerging new pathologies, ‘pandemic fatigue [29] enhancing ‘reactive depression’ [30] and ‘brain fog’ [31]. We find it difficult to talk about how to organise ourselves, or the effects of trauma we are already facing. This is precisely the reason to develop tools that intervene in our limited social capacities today. We understand that the next step is not individual, but a social choice. We cannot apply readymade diagnoses to the practice of PTL, because asserting already established solutions will not account for the specific problems of our times. That is why the conclusion is only the beginning.

Bio

PAN-PAN Kolektiva is a listening research group established in March 2020. Their name is taken from PAN-PAN, a standard emergency call based on the acronym PAN which stands for Pay Attention Now. After the global health and social emergency caused by Covid-19, society is not necessarily at an endpoint, but it does require our attention. In order to deal with the symptoms that the pandemic produces, PAN-PAN organizes collective meetings (post-spiritual retreats) where they develop listening tools. In September 2020 they organized a meeting in Cadalso de los Vidrios (province of Madrid) where they launched their first listening techniques. In January 2021 PAN-PAN published the article Post-Traumatic Listening in the Australian magazine Disclaimer laying out their key concepts while assessing critically what could be called the “conspiritualist turn”. That same month, PAN-PAN organized another meeting at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid where they have also been developing a series of works and exercises for the Museum’s website. They are currently working on organizing a meeting in October in Azala, a rural space in the Basque Country where they will expand on their listening techniques.

https://panpankolektiva.org/

Notes

[1] Vizcaíno, F., 2016. [image] Available at: https://fernandovizcaino.cultivarsalud.com/talleres/ven-volar-volar-taller-fin-semana-iniciacion-al-acroyoga/ [Accessed January 10, 2022].

[2] Buranyi, S., 2020. How coronavirus has brought together conspiracy theorists and the far right | Stephen Buranyi. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/04/coronavirus-conspiracy-theorists-far-right-protests [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[3] Evans, J., 2020. Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far Right Overlap. [online] Medium. Available at: https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far-right-overlap-d1a6ddcd7be4 [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[4] NTS Radio. 2018. The Four Elements: Japanese Ambient, Environmental, New Age & Healing Music 1980-1993, Vol. 4 Air Barcelona. [online] Available at: https://www.nts.live/shows/the-four-elements-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-healing-music-1980-1993 [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[5] Etter, D., 2020. [image] Available at: https://twitter.com/DanielEtterFoto/status/1299813836715962368 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[6] The authors followed health nuts who were determined to meditate and exercise their way to enlightenment. This time, in the spirit of George Plimpton’s brand of participatory journalism, they’ve become their own test cases, embarking on a year-long program in which they target a new area of the self to improve each month. They bulk up at CrossFit, go on the Master Cleanse liquid diet, try mindfulness and yoga, consult therapists and career coaches, sample prostate vibrators, attempt standup comedy, and attend a masculinity-boosting workshop that involves screaming and weeping naked in the woods. This is known as the ‘Wellness Syndrome’. In: Schwartz, A., 2018. Improving Ourselves to Death. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/improving-ourselves-to-death [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[7] Orlowski, J., 2020. The Social Dilemma. [image] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[8] Balce Ceneta M. / Associated Press, 2021. [image].

[9] Lower Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s played host to a community of artists preoccupied with finding new relationships to their materials and audiences. When Brand arrived, the most influential members of the scene included musician John Cage, painter Robert Rauschenberg, and performance artist Allan Kaprow. […] Cage, Rauschenberg, and Kaprow worked to undermine this tradition. Since the mid 1940s, Cage had been exploring Zen Buddhism. In: Turner, F., 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Chicago: From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, p. 46.

[10] Dayal, G., 2016. New age of new age music: ‘It used to just be for hippies and unassuming types’. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/12/new-age-music-revival-california-new-york [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[11] Ibid.

[12] Yet despite the enduring stigma, New Age is having a revival. Not long after the genre faded from public consciousness, it had an afterlife in the electronic underground, attracting converts from the post-noise scene: analogue synth noodler’s Emeralds, stargazing composer Stellar Om Source and electronic conceptualist Oneohtrix Point Never. More recently, its influence has worked its way into dance music and found itself recycled, like so much cultural detritus from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as vaporwave. There are further signs of new age’s continuing legacy across various genres and geographies, from Max Richter’s neo-classical sleep tapes and Yamaneko’s grime explorations to labels like Vancouver’s laid-back house specialists Mood Hut and eclectic cassette hub 1080p. In: Bychawski, A., 2016. The new wave of new age: How a maligned genre finally became cool. [online] Fact Magazine. Available at: https://www.factmag.com/2016/08/16/new-age-matthewdavid-deadboy-sam-kidel/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[13] Online Sonic Meditation Workshop after Pauline Oliveros (2020) ZKM. Available at: https://zkm.de/en/event/2020/04/online-sonic-meditation-workshop-after-pauline-oliveros [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[14] Laraaji presents: Online Laughter Meditation Workshop (2020) Unsound. Available at: https://www.unsound.pl/en/archive/en/2020-festival/events/laraaji-presents-online-laughter-meditation-workshop.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[15] Vescovacci, S., 2020. 🚔📢¡NO TE PAGAN POR PENSAR, SOLO OBEDECE!📢🚔POLICÍA NACIONAL- GUARDIA CIVIL Y MILITARES🔥😡. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pylwQ950zmA [Accessed January 10, 2022].

[16] Han, B., 2020. La emergencia viral y el mundo de mañana. Byung-Chul Han, el filósofo surcoreano que piensa desde Berlín. El País. Available at: https://elpais.com/ideas/2020-03-21/la-emergencia-viral-y-el-mundo-de-manana-byung-chul-han-el-filosofo-surcoreano-que-piensa-desde-berlin.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[17] Žižek, S., 2001. From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism. The Taoist ethic and the spirit of global capitalism. Available at: http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/zizek.php [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[18] Fanon, F., 1994. Toward the African revolution. New York: Grove Atlantic.

[19] Tucker, P. & Czapla, C., 2021. Post-COVID Stress Disorder: Another Emerging Consequence of the Global Pandemic. Psychiatric Times. Available at: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/post-covid-stress-disorder-emerging-consequence-global-pandemic [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[20] See for example Kaseda E & Andrew L (2020) Post-traumatic stress disorder: A differential diagnostic consideration for COVID-19 survivors, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 34. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13854046.2020.1811894 [Accessed February 20, 2022], p. 7-8.

[21] For more visit unsound.pl/en/archive/en/presence/medytacja.html.

[22] See Ana Longoni talking about her experiences with COVID-19. Longoni A (2020) Ana Longoni, sobre la reapertura de museos: “No queremos que vuelva la normalidad, porque era también el problema”. infobae. Available at: https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2020/08/19/ana-longoni-sobre-la-reapertura-de-museos-no-queremos-que-vuelva-la-normalidad-porque-era-tambien-el-problema/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[23] Davis, N., 2020. 'Brain fog': the people struggling to think clearly months after Covid. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/brain-fog-the-people-struggling-to-think-clearly-months-after-covid [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[24] Ochoa Gautier AM., 2015. Silence. In: Novak D (ed.), Keywords in Sound, Durham: Duke University Press. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/24574037/From_Keywords_in_Sound_Chapter_on_Silence_ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[25] Berinato, S., 2020. That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[26] The outputs from this event, in the form of documentation of a series of listening exercises, are available at: https://www.museoreinasofia.es/content/escucha-postraumatica [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[27] Ultra-red, 2012. Five Protocols for Organized Listening. Available at: http://www.ultrared.org/uploads/2012-Five_Protocols.pdf [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[28] Hempstock, S., & Andry, S., 2017. Radical Listening: A Manifesto. STRIKE! Magazine. Available at: https://www.strike.coop/radical-listening-a-manifesto [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[29] World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe, ‎2020. Pandemic fatigue: reinvigorating the public to prevent COVID-19: policy considerations for Member States in the WHO European Region. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/335820 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[30] Cocchimiglio, S., 2022. How Is Reactive Depression Different From Other Depressions? Better Help. Available at: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/depression/how-is-reactive-depression-different-from-other-depressions/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[31] Belluck, P., 2021. ‘I Feel Like I Have Dementia’: Brain Fog Plagues Covid Survivors. [online] New York TImes. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/health/covid-survivors.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

The text was originally published in the online magazine Disclaimer in 2020 as part of the Wakefulness to Consciousness series, which focuses on the politics of insomnia and the exploration of the desynchronisation of the human body and society. Published with the permission of the authors.

by PAN-PAN Kolektiva

We must develop new modes of listening in the traumatic spaces of the pandemic. The question for us is: do we have the necessary tools to listen to each other, or do we need to create new tools, attuned to the effects of COVID-19? We understand Post-traumatic Listening (PTL) as an ungrounded form of listening that relegates our individual subject positions in order to collectivise our shared wounded experiences.

Pay Attention Now

PAN-PAN is the international standard urgency signal, meaning Pay Attention Now. Although PAN-PAN does not denote immediate danger, it is used in navigation and flights to indicate situations that may become truly dangerous. We have adopted this signal as our name since the current COVID-19 crisis is ‘truly dangerous’, deeply affecting our way of perceiving and thinking.

Fernando Vizcaíno, leader of anti-mask movement in Madrid and former 9/11 conspirationist performing acroyoga. (Vizcaino, 2016) [1].

What is this mess?

We feel compelled to try to understand this mess. In recent months, we have found some strange cultural manifestations with even stranger connections: Neo-Nazi ‘hippies’ and Hare Krishnas trying to take over Germany’s Reichstag; a police association agitating for freedom and diversity in Spain; and finally — perhaps most extremely — the QAnon movement taking Trump as their God savior against the ‘cannibalist’ elite. We are witnessing increasingly disorientating meetings between new age and mindfulness spiritualists and paranoid conspiracy groups (Anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-G5, anti-semites), in what has been already termed conspiritualism [2].

Notwithstanding our problems with Western Modernity, we did not anticipate Neo-Nazi’s proclaiming peace with flower power [3]. Far from a coherent critique of modernity, we see these bizarre manifestations as indicators of an increasing political polarization. From where is this anti-rational turn coming? Why are we looking for comfort in practices of self-care and self-realisation [4]?

Neo-Nazi forming a ‘heart sign’ with her fingers during the demonstration in front of Germany’s Reichstag in Berlin. (Etter, 2020) [5].

The Seeds of Unrest

To begin, we might identify the psychological effects of our sustained precariousness. In Spain, our immediate context, the 2008 financial crisis coupled with political corruption led to the enforcement of harsh austerity. The Spanish population has now been suffering cutbacks in healthcare, education and culture for the last decade. COVID-19 has subjected hard-line lockdown measures to a defenceless population facing a healthcare crisis. These inter-linked crises are systemic; the old same story of neo-liberal production of debt and political corruption that we have been living through, across different countries around the world. In cultural sectors, instability is so common that the colloquial way to name the informal economy is a music metaphor: the Gig Economy. In the context of ongoing crises, we are forced into permanent self-entrepreneurship.

This constant instability, together with solitude experienced by workers, are crucial factors in the contemporary prevalence of depression and anxiety, among other pathologies and disorders. Instead of bringing us closer, this crisis amplifies our alienation. Taking pills does not address the cause, and the turn to self-care is not much better. There has been a lot of ‘self-whatever’ going on lately: self-employment, self-realisation, self-care, self-discipline… etc. The growing self-industry is no accident, corporations have embraced this turn, supporting workers to improve themselves, to meditate and exercise their ‘way to enlightenment’ [6]. We have the feeling — not so deep inside — that pills, self-care and regular exercise will not eradicate the depression and anxiety caused by the stress of this moment.

Contemporary capitalism and its surveillance mechanisms — the algorithmic filter bubbles of YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, or Deliveroo — enlarge the gap between one person and another [7]. Platform Capitalism is a sophisticated update of the ‘gig economy’. Hence, a growing part of the population is cornered by material and psychological instability, gradually losing contact with others. For example, those working within these platforms have distributed time schedules which make it impossible not only to meet other workers to organise, but also to socialise. This double atomisation poses problems both in the private and public sphere. On the one hand these conditions make organising and collective bargaining almost impossible. On the other, outside of work, in private spheres, our common references become individualised through our consumer tastes, as if we were zombies wanting only to get through the last two hours of the day, pacified with easy entertainment.

Jake Angeli, Self Initiated Shaman, Energetic Healer, Ordained Minister, ‘Yellowstone Wolf’’ and pro QAnon protester at US Senate 6 January 2021. (Balce Ceneta M. / Associated Press, 2021) [8].

The Spiritual Turn

Simultaneously, many people are turning towards practices that emerge out of Western fascinations with Asian spirituality. In the realm of experimental music, this is crucially linked to John Cage, for whom Zen Buddhism was a deep influence, something he promoted to students at Black Mountain College in the 1950’s. Fred Turner points out how Stewart Brand, a crucial originator of Silicon Valley technoculture was influenced by the practices of Cage, Rauschenberg, Kaprow, and their happenings [9]. The spiritual / Eastern philosophy turn within experimental music is also evident in composers such as Pauline Oliveros and LaMonte Young. Recently we hear it making a comeback in New Age and ambient music, and music therapy [10], with the revival, for instance, of classic ambient musicians such as Greg Davis or Iasos [11], and the emergence of younger ones with a style inflected by ‘precarity and political turmoil’ [12]. Over the last few years, this revival has expanded to big festival programmes and cultural institutions such as ZKM, in Karlsruhe Germany that programmed an online Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditation [13]. Or Unsound Festival from Krakow, Poland that in October 2020 presented the North American artist Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon) Online Deep Listening Meditation and Online Laughter Meditation [14].

This ‘oriental’ turn is not only an artworld phenomena, but has also been deployed more broadly during the pandemic. For example, philosopher and cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han recognises the disciplinarian roots of Taoism in the way AI technologies have been applied in countries including China and South Korea in the pandemic context. [16]. Slavoj Žižek has described this tendency as ‘Western Buddhism’; a ‘remedy’ against stressful tension resulting from capitalist dynamics, and the global capitalist ideology itself. [17]. It is precisely, in their instrumentalisation as remedy, cure or treatment, that we perceive self-care practices to be reappropriated by the logic of capital; as forces which mitigate, and thus further enable, the effects of precariousness, similarly to the aforementioned pharmacologisation of depression and anxiety.

Post-traumatic Listening (PTL)

Historically ‘collective trauma’ describes the psychological state of an entire society that witnesses a traumatic event. Here we are reminded of Frantz Fanon’s account of collective trauma for Algerians exposed to the horrors of the French colonial project. Fanon suggested that a way to deal with trauma is to engage in collective struggle for liberation [18]. While circumstances are now different, the broad social impact and consequence of COVID-19 could be considered as a mass, durational, traumatic event. We suggest that our forms of listening are strongly altered under current conditions, and that we need to understand these changes.

Following Freud, we describe as a ‘traumatic’ event any stimulation from the outside that is too powerful for our defense mechanisms, and therefore cannot be articulated in language. Our relation to the word is changing, and everyday it feels as if it is becoming more unreal, which produces more anxiety. A recent online survey of almost 3,500 people in Spain found increased symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD, 15.8%), depression (18.7%), and anxiety (21.6%), with loneliness the strongest predictor of psychological symptoms after COVID-19 [19]. There are already publications warning that COVID-19 can generate neuropsychological deficits, and that survivors of the virus can easily develop PTSD [20]. What is increasingly clear is that anxiety is here to stay, and that COVID-19’s consequences are impacting both our economic and social realities.

‘Being mindful and present in the moment is harder than ever, and attending a festival such as Unsound, overflowing with events, doesn’t necessarily help.’ During Unsound 2018 the organization offered daily meditation sessions as part of the festival [21].

Anxiety, for Lacan, is symptomatic of a subject not at home with their subjectivity, having lost their reference points. Anxiety has no relation to symbolisation, and because of this, cannot be mediated. It is simultaneously non-imagined and not-ruled, and has no object which can be dealt with. A traumatic event is connected to anxiety, in the sense that it is a meaningless experience, literally an experience without sense. The subject recalls the experience but cannot form an objective account of it. Literally, we know that specific symptoms of COVID-19, like loss of smell and brain-fog, are difficult to fully describe; we struggle to find the words. ‘Yesterday I minced six cloves for the potion that my dear friend Sol ordered me to take, mixed with honey, ginger and lemon. I could not smell anything in my fingers” [22]. People who have contracted COVID-19 relate that their exhaustion is accelerated to the point of symptoms resembling derealisation or depersonalisation disorder. Mirabai Nicholson-McKellar, a 36 year-old Australian, relates, for instance: ‘When I get tired it becomes much worse and sometimes all I can do is lay in bed and watch TV… I feel like a shadow of my former self. I am not living right now, I am simply existing’ [23].

Taking these psychosomatic dimensions into account, we propose Post-traumatic Listening (PTL) as listening informed by trauma’s gap in the symbolic realm. We have found that practices of mindfulness produce an illusion of coherence, but do not take into consideration the causes of problems, the gaps mentioned above. Where these practices address ‘the gap’, they do so at an individual level, making it impossible for a collective reckoning with trauma. By sharing the lack of articulation at the root of anxiety, Post-traumatic Listening is listening at the edge of signification, expressing symptoms, doubts and fragile moments of anxiety without the illusion of coherence. Post-traumatic Listening is listening to structural anxiety in an attempt to cope with unprecedented times. By acknowledging its ambitious task, PTL begins in the most humble way, by trying to offset our prejudices.

Unprejudiced Listening

Through ‘unprejudiced listening’, we open ourselves to the fragility of different experiences, and also the mechanisms that people use to process this fragility. We developed the concept of unprejudiced listening in order to deal with our own prejudices towards certain ‘spiritual practices’. We know that we need to understand and engage, without being too judgemental, with these new unfamiliar territories, acknowledging our conflicting emotions and thoughts. The way in which many people are reacting to the pandemic — with conspiracy theories, right-wing ideologies, forms of denial and escapism — reinforces our sense of the need to suspend some of our assumptions, our consensus realities. Only then we will be able to listen and comprehend the complexities of our shared situation.

PTL in Practice

Since 11 March 2020, we have been meeting via video-conference to share our thoughts, and feelings of disbelief, sadness and grief. We have also laughed a lot, and given mutual support. Our conversations have been crucial in keeping our morale up. We knew it was necessary to share our concerns and research with others, and so decided to form a collective experimental research project, inviting people from sound activism, experimental music and dance communities, and from locations including Madrid, Berlin, and Barcelona.

Pan Pan Kolektiva meeting at Cadalso de los Vidrios, Madrid 4 September 2020.

OFrom 3–6 September 2020, we met following the announcement of pandemic social regulations in Cadalso de los Vidrios, a small mountain town in the Madrid region. Our agenda was to develop tools for listening, to respond to ‘silencing’ [24], to the restricted rights of expression caused by confinement, and to the silence left by the death of loved ones from COVID-19 [25]. We wanted to produce listening methodologies to help us to think about, and begin to transgress borders, perceptive and physical, by sharing experiences and grief.

As an example, the first Post-traumatic Listening exercise we attempted was as follows: we shared our experiences of lockdown in an unprejudiced way with an emphasis on what we saw as problematic elements, and how they affected us. Each of us described the negative consequences of the pandemic in an honest and sincere way. We listened with respect and kindness, acknowledging the heightened sensitivity that comes with living in a brutalised society. For us, the point was to develop the sensibility necessary to be receptive to difficult circumstances without putting up protective shields. This first exercise set a decisive tone for the rest of the weekend. There were no artist / audience boundaries, nor the usual theatrical connotations or props of collective ‘performance’. We all were in the same boat from which to develop a common listening practice based on trust and mutual respect. Elements of the exercises were presented (from the original "we will present", editor's note) during a public event on 23 January 2021 at Museo Reina Sofía, in Madrid [26]. Our reference points draw from existing examples, for instance, those of sound activists Ultra-Red, whose active listening protocols were developed after the AIDS epidemic, and later appropriated by a range of agents [27].

The Conclusion is Just the Beginning

For Prentis Hemphill, ‘Trauma is inherent in life, and oppression is the organisation and distribution of that trauma’. Through this collective, it is crucial for us to come together, in one way or another, physically or digitally, to share our experiences of isolation during COVID-19 confinement and lockdown. The politicisation of the collective trauma that we are going through is a necessary strategy to counter the individual exercises of self-care that ultimately work to enable the status quo. Instead of spiritual escapism, we strive towards collective self-consciousness. Instead of connecting to the cosmos, we turn to each other to understand socioeconomic inequalities, and hierarchical oppressive power structures. Following writer and activist Prentis Hemphill, we understand trauma as a somatic response to oppression that has an inherently political dimension.

Many of our responses to the pandemic have been reactive rather than proactive, making us less connected to each other. Applying PTL, unprejudiced and ‘radical listening’ [28] as a social and activist praxis is no longer just an option, but an urgent necessity. Let’s allow ourselves acts of resilience, of unprejudiced listening, to share our embodied social wounds. We can’t imagine all the traumatic dimensions of our present situation, made worse by self-regulation, state oppression, precarity and media overdose. We are aware that there are emerging new pathologies, ‘pandemic fatigue [29] enhancing ‘reactive depression’ [30] and ‘brain fog’ [31]. We find it difficult to talk about how to organise ourselves, or the effects of trauma we are already facing. This is precisely the reason to develop tools that intervene in our limited social capacities today. We understand that the next step is not individual, but a social choice. We cannot apply readymade diagnoses to the practice of PTL, because asserting already established solutions will not account for the specific problems of our times. That is why the conclusion is only the beginning.

Bio

[1] Vizcaíno, F., 2016. [image] Available at: https://fernandovizcaino.cultivarsalud.com/talleres/ven-volar-volar-taller-fin-semana-iniciacion-al-acroyoga/ [Accessed January 10, 2022].

[2] Buranyi, S., 2020. How coronavirus has brought together conspiracy theorists and the far right | Stephen Buranyi. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/04/coronavirus-conspiracy-theorists-far-right-protests [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[3] Evans, J., 2020. Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far Right Overlap. [online] Medium. Available at: https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far-right-overlap-d1a6ddcd7be4 [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[4] NTS Radio. 2018. The Four Elements: Japanese Ambient, Environmental, New Age & Healing Music 1980-1993, Vol. 4 Air Barcelona. [online] Available at: https://www.nts.live/shows/the-four-elements-japanese-ambient-environmental-new-age-healing-music-1980-1993 [Accessed February 19, 2022].

[5] Etter, D., 2020. [image] Available at: https://twitter.com/DanielEtterFoto/status/1299813836715962368 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[6] The authors followed health nuts who were determined to meditate and exercise their way to enlightenment. This time, in the spirit of George Plimpton’s brand of participatory journalism, they’ve become their own test cases, embarking on a year-long program in which they target a new area of the self to improve each month. They bulk up at CrossFit, go on the Master Cleanse liquid diet, try mindfulness and yoga, consult therapists and career coaches, sample prostate vibrators, attempt standup comedy, and attend a masculinity-boosting workshop that involves screaming and weeping naked in the woods. This is known as the ‘Wellness Syndrome’. In: Schwartz, A., 2018. Improving Ourselves to Death. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/improving-ourselves-to-death [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[7] Orlowski, J., 2020. The Social Dilemma. [image] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/title/81254224 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[8] Balce Ceneta M. / Associated Press, 2021. [image].

[9] Lower Manhattan in the late 1950s and early 1960s played host to a community of artists preoccupied with finding new relationships to their materials and audiences. When Brand arrived, the most influential members of the scene included musician John Cage, painter Robert Rauschenberg, and performance artist Allan Kaprow. […] Cage, Rauschenberg, and Kaprow worked to undermine this tradition. Since the mid 1940s, Cage had been exploring Zen Buddhism. In: Turner, F., 2006. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Chicago: From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, p. 46.

[10] Dayal, G., 2016. New age of new age music: ‘It used to just be for hippies and unassuming types’. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/12/new-age-music-revival-california-new-york [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[11] Ibid.

[12] Yet despite the enduring stigma, New Age is having a revival. Not long after the genre faded from public consciousness, it had an afterlife in the electronic underground, attracting converts from the post-noise scene: analogue synth noodler’s Emeralds, stargazing composer Stellar Om Source and electronic conceptualist Oneohtrix Point Never. More recently, its influence has worked its way into dance music and found itself recycled, like so much cultural detritus from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as vaporwave. There are further signs of new age’s continuing legacy across various genres and geographies, from Max Richter’s neo-classical sleep tapes and Yamaneko’s grime explorations to labels like Vancouver’s laid-back house specialists Mood Hut and eclectic cassette hub 1080p. In: Bychawski, A., 2016. The new wave of new age: How a maligned genre finally became cool. [online] Fact Magazine. Available at: https://www.factmag.com/2016/08/16/new-age-matthewdavid-deadboy-sam-kidel/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[13] Online Sonic Meditation Workshop after Pauline Oliveros (2020) ZKM. Available at: https://zkm.de/en/event/2020/04/online-sonic-meditation-workshop-after-pauline-oliveros [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[14] Laraaji presents: Online Laughter Meditation Workshop (2020) Unsound. Available at: https://www.unsound.pl/en/archive/en/2020-festival/events/laraaji-presents-online-laughter-meditation-workshop.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[15] Vescovacci, S., 2020. 🚔📢¡NO TE PAGAN POR PENSAR, SOLO OBEDECE!📢🚔POLICÍA NACIONAL- GUARDIA CIVIL Y MILITARES🔥😡. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pylwQ950zmA [Accessed January 10, 2022].

[16] Han, B., 2020. La emergencia viral y el mundo de mañana. Byung-Chul Han, el filósofo surcoreano que piensa desde Berlín. El País. Available at: https://elpais.com/ideas/2020-03-21/la-emergencia-viral-y-el-mundo-de-manana-byung-chul-han-el-filosofo-surcoreano-que-piensa-desde-berlin.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[17] Žižek, S., 2001. From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism. The Taoist ethic and the spirit of global capitalism. Available at: http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/zizek.php [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[18] Fanon, F., 1994. Toward the African revolution. New York: Grove Atlantic.

[19] Tucker, P. & Czapla, C., 2021. Post-COVID Stress Disorder: Another Emerging Consequence of the Global Pandemic. Psychiatric Times. Available at: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/post-covid-stress-disorder-emerging-consequence-global-pandemic [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[20] See for example Kaseda E & Andrew L (2020) Post-traumatic stress disorder: A differential diagnostic consideration for COVID-19 survivors, The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 34. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13854046.2020.1811894 [Accessed February 20, 2022], p. 7-8.

[21] For more visit unsound.pl/en/archive/en/presence/medytacja.html.

[22] See Ana Longoni talking about her experiences with COVID-19. Longoni A (2020) Ana Longoni, sobre la reapertura de museos: “No queremos que vuelva la normalidad, porque era también el problema”. infobae. Available at: https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2020/08/19/ana-longoni-sobre-la-reapertura-de-museos-no-queremos-que-vuelva-la-normalidad-porque-era-tambien-el-problema/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[23] Davis, N., 2020. 'Brain fog': the people struggling to think clearly months after Covid. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/brain-fog-the-people-struggling-to-think-clearly-months-after-covid [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[24] Ochoa Gautier AM., 2015. Silence. In: Novak D (ed.), Keywords in Sound, Durham: Duke University Press. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/24574037/From_Keywords_in_Sound_Chapter_on_Silence_ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[25] Berinato, S., 2020. That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2020/03/that-discomfort-youre-feeling-is-grief [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[26] The outputs from this event, in the form of documentation of a series of listening exercises, are available at: https://www.museoreinasofia.es/content/escucha-postraumatica [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[27] Ultra-red, 2012. Five Protocols for Organized Listening. Available at: http://www.ultrared.org/uploads/2012-Five_Protocols.pdf [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[28] Hempstock, S., & Andry, S., 2017. Radical Listening: A Manifesto. STRIKE! Magazine. Available at: https://www.strike.coop/radical-listening-a-manifesto [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[29] World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe, ‎2020. Pandemic fatigue: reinvigorating the public to prevent COVID-19: policy considerations for Member States in the WHO European Region. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe. Available at: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/335820 [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[30] Cocchimiglio, S., 2022. How Is Reactive Depression Different From Other Depressions? Better Help. Available at: https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/depression/how-is-reactive-depression-different-from-other-depressions/ [Accessed February 20, 2022].

[31] Belluck, P., 2021. ‘I Feel Like I Have Dementia’: Brain Fog Plagues Covid Survivors. [online] New York TImes. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/health/covid-survivors.html [Accessed February 20, 2022].

The text was originally published in the online magazine Disclaimer in 2020 as part of the Wakefulness to Consciousness series, which focuses on the politics of insomnia and the exploration of the desynchronisation of the human body and society. Published with the permission of the authors.