‘Prickly Ear’ invites you to stretch your ear, following signals that slip and leak in transmission. The two-day listening festival circuits around covert messages, memories and emotions embedded in the public realm, revealing how sound attempts to carry privately, yet constantly fails to contain. In the spaces left ajar, we imagine how everyday sounds, music and rhythms, spill into the precarious and subversive. 

A dedicated ‘Listening Zone’ presents works centered on contingent yet discreet field recordings. Drifting across the urban, nature, domestic and social, three sonic works capture disparate soundscapes that once belonged to a particular time-space, and recomposed in present imaginations of nostalgia, longing and fantasy. Beyond an auditory experience, visitors will also encounter films, texts, visuals and scents, where the ear bridges towards senses of sight and touch. 

Concurrently, a series of programmed activations expands on contexts of deliberately silenced moments in social histories, alongside moments of release and gathering in sonority. Thematic screenings, performances, workshops and conversations will unfold across the weekend, shaping a dynamically evolving communal space that shifts between attentive listening and shared movements. 

The programme is co-presented with Wet Shoes from the ss space space Learning Fellowship.