Glasgow, a city not universally famous for waiting until the other person has finished, is hosting a party devoted entirely to listening. The radical equipment consists of three sound works, several pairs of ears and no panel moderator clutching a lanyard.
Listening through Tongues takes place at Listen Gallery on Thursday 5 November from 5pm to 7pm. Entry is free and the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival’s booking link was live when checked. There will also be halal food, so the evening has remembered that human beings absorb culture more willingly when nobody has forgotten dinner.
The three works were made collaboratively by sound artist Riah Naief with Nawal, Hanadee, Ameena, Shaimaa, Esra, Amira and Zahara. Their workshops used vocal play, call and response and song making to explore language and voice, with the throat treated as an instrument and the tongue as an extension of memory. The Professor has brought a notebook but, in a historic concession, intends to keep it quiet.
The event belongs to The Art of Family Life, a two year programme developed with members of intergenerational refugee communities in Glasgow. Volunteer participants collected oral histories in more than six languages, while artists worked with memory, identity and connection through cooking, poetry and sound. The result is not somebody else interpreting a community from the safe side of a clipboard. The community helped make the work.
Thursday is described as a collective listening party rather than a lecture. Listen Gallery says the space is dry and halal, with no alcohol on site, and the programme includes multilingual audio and text. It also carries a clear content note for experiences of displacement, resettlement, family separation and isolation. That is useful care, stated plainly, without requiring an interpretive wall label the size of Ayrshire.
The current festival page lists Listen Gallery at 35 Gallowgate, G1 5AA, with the nearest bus stop about three minutes away. It does not publish an age rule or a full access statement for this event, so anyone who needs either confirmed should contact the organiser before travelling. The live listing provides an email address and booking route; the draft will not turn a missing sentence into an imaginary ramp.
The wider exhibition is free and listed as open daily from 2pm to 7pm until 18 November, apart from 12 November when the space is reserved for ticketed events. That gives the sound works a life beyond Thursday’s gathering, although the food has made no comparable long term promise.
I have not attended the exhibition and will not pretend the pigeon has already reviewed the acoustics. What is verified is the date, time, free booking route, Gallowgate address, three work programme, named collaborators, halal food and the published content note. Places can change close to an event, so check the live page before setting off.
Listening through Tongues asks Glasgow to consider where language sits in the body and what memory sounds like when people make it together. For two hours on Gallowgate, the city can lower its own volume and hear the answer.
