What if the focus of urban living was not productivity but play?

Place Listening explores how playful urban listening can expand the relationships between people and the places they inhabit. We live in a time where efficiency is favoured over play: roads are for circulation not interaction; places are designed around consumption not co-existence; we sleep not to dream but to be productive the next day. Listening and play can enable forms of awareness that challenge these ingrained norms and allow for different ways of being in the city.

Place Listening is developed with citizens and visitors of Oslo through a series of listening, playing, and walking workshops in May 2019. Recordings of the workshops have been edited into a site-specific audio walk around the area of ROM. Inside the gallery, you can experience a sound-based documentation of this audio walk and the process behind its making. Grab some headphones and let the Future guide you through a playful exploration of the stories, opinions and places of the present.

Photo credit: Anna-Emilie-Rosen