PAN-PAN KOLEKTIVA
Post-Traumatic Listening as a tool to cope with the mass, durational Covid-19 crisis.
PAN-PAN is the international standard urgency signal, meaning Pay Attention Now. It doesn't warn about immediate danger, but is used in navigation and flights to indicate situations that may become very serious if unattended to. That is a big part of why PAN-PAN Kolektiva chose this name – they feel that danger is coming, and the symptoms are all around us.
PAN-PAN Kolektiva started their activities in the spring of 2020, as a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic and the many concerning surrounding circumstances which are present more or less in virtually all contemporary Western societies: austerity, neoliberalism, instability, and the resulting, continually increasing feelings of alienation, anxiety and depression among the general population. The Covid-19 pandemic additionally exposed very concerning and disorienting realities all around the world, many of which could be described as “conspiritualism” (individualistic mindfulness and spirituality meeting paranoid conspiracy groups). In what could be described as the collective's manifesto, several of these instances are listed: “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.”
Additional layers of complexity in our reality – everything from isolating working conditions to our individual consumption of media and entertainment – further atomize society at every level. What many are reaching to as a remedy are practices that emerge out of Western fascinations with Asian spirituality; new age and ambient music as a “balm for dissonant times,” meditation as a cure for anxiety and loneliness etc. While perhaps beneficial on some level, it is precisely their perceived role as the “cure/balm/medicine” that reappropriates them by the logic of capital. They are also deeply individualized practices, and completely unsuitable as solutions to what the world has gone through in the last 18 months, which can only be described as a mass, durational, traumatic event.
PAN-PAN Kolektiva acknowledge that the tools we have and the solutions at our disposal are completely unsuitable for the challenge ahead of us. Instead, they introduce what they coined as Post-Traumatic Listening (PTL). While acknowledging it is quite a significant task, they propose a humble, simple beginning: unprejudiced listening. They declare that “we need to understand and engage with these new unfamiliar territories without being too judgmental, acknowledging our conflicting emotions and thoughts.”
One of the outcomes of the collective's experiences and research – presented here via Unseen – is a virtual chat bot called Unprejudiced Listening Bot. It is, alongside the text, a part of a performative project that can help you explore materials and resources brought together by PAN-PAN Kolektiva during the past year or so. The database is being updated with new content. The experience of chatting with it is curious, not unlike scrolling through Instagram – you'll certainly encounter similar themes, and at times ask yourself the question: “Who is the one practicing unprejudiced listening right now?”
Adam Badí Donoval
UNPREJUDICED LISTENING BOT
PAN-PAN Kolektiva focuses on analysing, through listening, the effects of the Covid -19 crisis.
The ongoing social fragmentation has triggered the rise of totalitarian ideologies with the ascent of New Age or anti-mask movements that harbour conspiracy theories — generally speaking, what has been termed “conspirituality”.
We pay attention to these movements critically while we generate listening techniques that allow us to better deal with the effects of the pandemic.
Unprejudiced Listening Bot is a virtual entity for chatting. It is based on NLP - Natural Language Processing - and interacts with you by giving feedback from news, images, texts and guidance quotes, derived from the collective's research. It is programmed to create the illusion of offering you careful listening, comfort and understanding.
The starting point is to investigate the dangerous confluence between the rise of spirituality, fascism and conspiracy which often emerges from the filter bubbles produced by algorithmic enchantment.
The current isolation and confinement make us search for different forms of interaction in order to deal with the traumatic consequences of Covid-19. However, in these one-on-one forms of interactions we tend to project our own desires and anxieties without fully comprehending the mechanisms behind the medium and their manipulative capacities.
In this performative project you can explore the materials brought together by PAN-PAN Kolektiva and in each single interaction you will be triggering a different kind of serendipity.
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.
SECONDARY SOURCES
PAN-PAN KOLEKTIVA
Post-Traumatic Listening as a tool to cope with the mass, durational Covid-19 crisis.
PAN-PAN is the international standard urgency signal, meaning Pay Attention Now. It doesn't warn about immediate danger, but is used in navigation and flights to indicate situations that may become very serious if unattended to. That is a big part of why PAN-PAN Kolektiva chose this name – they feel that danger is coming, and the symptoms are all around us.
PAN-PAN Kolektiva started their activities in the spring of 2020, as a reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic and the many concerning surrounding circumstances which are present more or less in virtually all contemporary Western societies: austerity, neoliberalism, instability, and the resulting, continually increasing feelings of alienation, anxiety and depression among the general population. The Covid-19 pandemic additionally exposed very concerning and disorienting realities all around the world, many of which could be described as “conspiritualism” (individualistic mindfulness and spirituality meeting paranoid conspiracy groups). In what could be described as the collective's manifesto, several of these instances are listed: “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.”
Additional layers of complexity in our reality – everything from isolating working conditions to our individual consumption of media and entertainment – further atomize society at every level. What many are reaching to as a remedy are practices that emerge out of Western fascinations with Asian spirituality; new age and ambient music as a “balm for dissonant times,” meditation as a cure for anxiety and loneliness etc. While perhaps beneficial on some level, it is precisely their perceived role as the “cure/balm/medicine” that reappropriates them by the logic of capital. They are also deeply individualized practices, and completely unsuitable as solutions to what the world has gone through in the last 18 months, which can only be described as a mass, durational, traumatic event.
PAN-PAN Kolektiva acknowledge that the tools we have and the solutions at our disposal are completely unsuitable for the challenge ahead of us. Instead, they introduce what they coined as Post-Traumatic Listening (PTL). While acknowledging it is quite a significant task, they propose a humble, simple beginning: unprejudiced listening. They declare that “we need to understand and engage with these new unfamiliar territories without being too judgmental, acknowledging our conflicting emotions and thoughts.”
One of the outcomes of the collective's experiences and research – presented here via Unseen – is a virtual chat bot called Unprejudiced Listening Bot. It is, alongside the text, a part of a performative project that can help you explore materials and resources brought together by PAN-PAN Kolektiva during the past year or so. The database is being updated with new content. The experience of chatting with it is curious, not unlike scrolling through Instagram – you'll certainly encounter similar themes, and at times ask yourself the question: “Who is the one practicing unprejudiced listening right now?”
Adam Badí Donoval
UNPREJUDICED LISTENING BOT
PAN-PAN Kolektiva focuses on analysing, through listening, the effects of the Covid -19 crisis.
The ongoing social fragmentation has triggered the rise of totalitarian ideologies with the ascent of New Age or anti-mask movements that harbour conspiracy theories — generally speaking, what has been termed “conspirituality”.
We pay attention to these movements critically while we generate listening techniques that allow us to better deal with the effects of the pandemic.
Unprejudiced Listening Bot is a virtual entity for chatting. It is based on NLP - Natural Language Processing - and interacts with you by giving feedback from news, images, texts and guidance quotes, derived from the collective's research. It is programmed to create the illusion of offering you careful listening, comfort and understanding.
The starting point is to investigate the dangerous confluence between the rise of spirituality, fascism and conspiracy which often emerges from the filter bubbles produced by algorithmic enchantment.
The current isolation and confinement make us search for different forms of interaction in order to deal with the traumatic consequences of Covid-19. However, in these one-on-one forms of interactions we tend to project our own desires and anxieties without fully comprehending the mechanisms behind the medium and their manipulative capacities.
In this performative project you can explore the materials brought together by PAN-PAN Kolektiva and in each single interaction you will be triggering a different kind of serendipity.
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.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.