Practising Listening

Photo credit: Re-Listening Care (2025) by Okui Lala (Malaysia), Ana Estrada (Mexico/Australia) and Nasrikah (Indonesia/Malaysia)

Dear Reader,

Imagine your ears grew long and furry, and started picking out sounds and movements previously unheard. The initial shock! Is this the feeling of the wind singing to the grass? The concrete pavement cracking to the advancing tree root?

We would need to attune ourselves to new experiences. Some may remain jarring. Certain sensations and sounds enter our vocabulary and become familiar; our language grows, and with it, new connections to things and creatures around us.

In the month of National Day and the Singapore Night Festival, to broaden and deepen our language for community life, Ethos Books will be introducing previously unheard voices and stories.

Our Stories, On Rotation is Ethos’ version of an SG60 celebration with MICRO bakery: readers meet one another over beverage and bakes, to read curated excerpts on diverse cultures and histories, and to have conversations on places and stories that we care for.

Photo credit: New Practices for Tidal Attunement (2025), by Superlative Futures (Singapore; Wong Zi Hao and Liu Dian Cong)

The above, New Practices for Tidal Attunement, and this letter's opening visual of Re-Listening Care, are part of The Listening Biennial, which Ethos is co-programming with artist Alecia Neo. At the core of The Listening Biennial are the practices of relational listening and entering difference. The artworks and programmes centre on three themes intimate with the values of the Ethos community: aural diversity, social repair and ecological attunement.

There will be three main Listening venues along Waterloo Street (42 Waterloo Street, Objectifs, Stamford Arts Centre), with activations such as:

42 Waterloo Street

• DJ stims at My tiny space by Rachel S.Y. Chen, Wheelsmith and Sky Shen
• Mapping Ancestry by Jade Johnson (UK)
• Silent Studio by Isabelle Lim, Grace Lee-Khoo and Benedict Tay
• i. womb song, ii. love is the song by Esther Vincent and Aine Nakamura (Japan)

Objectifs

• Field Recording Workshop by Here and Found (Thailand)

Stamford Arts Centre

• Performing Reverence by Sanat Mehta (India)

You can also experience a soundwalk at Hong Lim Complex with Chong Li-Chuan’s On Any Given Day, or dine into hybridity and interconnectedness at Kai’s at Practice Tuckshop.

Through communal gatherings and multidisciplinary experiences, let’s extend our mutual vocabularies for inclusion and care.

Kah Gay,
Publisher, Ethos Books

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