The quiet is not silent: a workshop on listening and storytelling artistic practice and research with Petra Bauer

(Title borrowed from Tina Campt)

What does it mean to listen with care — to each other, to images, to the unsayable? How do stories shift when we tell them otherwise, together? Join artist and filmmaker Petra Bauer for a 4-hour workshop that explores listening not as a passive act, but as a method, an ethics, and a form of resistance. Titled The quiet is not silent — a phrase borrowed from Tina Campt — the workshop will create space for shared listening, deep attention, and storytelling beyond the dominant voice.

Thinking through Walter Benjamin’s idea that “storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained,” the workshop asks what kinds of stories remain — or re-emerge — when we slow down, when we listen differently, when we repeat not to fix meaning, but to let it unfold.

Drawing on the writings of Tina Campt, Pauline Oliveros, Walter Benjamin, and Olivier Marboeuf, participants will move through a series of collective exercises — somatic tuning, sound walks, interrupted tales, and silent reimaginings of film. Together we will explore how listening can be a form of thinking, a method of making, and a way of being with others. The workshop is presented in connection with Bauer’s exhibition WE CALL YOU! Sisters! Mothers! Workers! at the University of Queensland Art Museum, which brings together films from her series Looking for Jeanne. These works — rooted in feminist solidarity, collective resistance, and political listening — form a subtle context for our shared explorations.

This is not a technical workshop. Participants don’t need prior experience in sound, storytelling, or filmmaking. What’s asked is simply a willingness to be present, to be curious, and to listen — not for answers, but for openings.

Places are limited.

Participation is by EOI, with submissions closing on the Monday July 21st. Reading material, schedule and details about what to bring will be shared with participants in advance.

BIO

Petra Bauer (she/her)

Petra Bauer is an artist and filmmaker based in Stockholm whose practice unfolds through long-term collaborations at the intersection of feminist politics, social movements, and the moving image. She approaches filmmaking not merely as representation but as a shared method—one that listens, questions, and builds solidarities across difference. Her work engages film as a space for collective inquiry, political memory, and the rehearsal of alternative forms of life.

Bauer studied at the Malmö Art Academy and holds a PhD from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. She is currently Professor in Film & Media and responsible for the research area Art, Technology & Materiality at Stockholm University of the Arts, and has held a professorship in moving image at the Royal Institute of Art since 2016.

Over the years, she has co-developed cinematic and pedagogical processes with grassroots networks—ranging from SCOT-PEP’s advocacy for sex workers’ rights in Scotland, to collaborations with Southall Black Sisters in London, feminist archives and women’s centres across Europe. She has also worked closely with activist Carolina Sinisalo and filmmaker Marius Dybwad Brandrud in exploring grief, resistance, and political witnessing through film. These projects are shaped by a politics of listening, where storytelling becomes both a form of resistance and a practice of care.

Her films and research have been presented at venues such as The Showroom, Collective, Fruitmarket, Tensta konsthall, the Venice Biennale, and Museo Reina Sofía, among others.

Registrations
To register / share your interest in joining, send an EOI to wts@wts.org.au

WORKSHOP

Sunday 27 July, 12—4PM

In the gallery

REGISTER

To register your interest, send an EOI to wts@wts.org.au

Places are limited. Submissions close on Monday July 21st.

This workshop is presented in partnership with The University of Queensland (UQ) and UQ Art Museum.