What does the act of listening involve and which are its implications? CaixaForum Barcelona organises, in the context of the 21st edition of the Sónar Festival, the meeting “A l’Escolta (Listening).” The aim of this programme of talks, performances and other experiences around listening is to put forward and debate some of the questions raised by what we usually call “sound art.”  What is sound art? Is it not, as Max Neuhaus indicated, a rather ambiguous name that, in fact, tells us very little? Does the name not place too much emphasis on sound understood as a simple medium and ignore everything that forms a part of its necessary correlative, i.e. this complex process of understanding reality that is listening? Seth Kim-Cohen, Salomé Voegelin, Edwin Van der Heide, Mattin, Marta García Quiñones, Carme Pardo, José Manuel Costa, Edu Comelles and Lluís Nacenta are the main guests invited to this international meeting, in which the intention is to re-appraise the theoretical and critical approach to an art of sound and listening. 

Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòries, by Edu Comelles Within the symposium “A l’Escolta,” Edu Comelles presents Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòries (from June 9 to 15 in the CaixaForum entrance hall), a multi-channel sound installation based on the sounds recorded during the days preceding the start of the demolition of the raised roundabout at Barcelona’s plaça de les Glòries. 
Manipulated and reorganised at random, the rhythms of the vehicles passing over the expansion joints of the raised roundabout, the sustained vibrations of the metal parts of the architectural structure and the background hum of the construction work reappear as the spectral sounds from a vanished space. 

Homage to Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) Posed as an exercise in “sound archaeology,” the installation Last Days. Rèquiem per les Glòriesworks as the sonic reverse of the graphic image of the “A l’Escolta” meeting. Inspired by the famous photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge that Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) dedicated in 1976 to Jo Jones, in which large capitals spell out the word “LISTEN,” the image of the poster for the meeting was taken under the raised Glòries roundabout just before demolition started. 
The graphic image of the symposium, the sound installation by Edu Comelles and the performanceEnlist by Seth Kim-Cohen and Mattin are intended as a homage to Neuhaus, one of the main pioneers in the art of sound and listening, on the 75th anniversary of his birth.

Programme curated by Arnau Horta