What is going to happen to the ways in which we listen in a couple of decades? Seemingly simple and innocuous, the question about the possible futures of listening opens up many issues and concerns entangled in a world of what Rosi Braidott (2019) calls the posthuman convergence where we are moving in a slow-yet-fast crashing course towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Sixth Mass Extinction all at the same time.
In this panel discussion, Suk-Jun Kim, professor of electronic music and sound art at the University of Aberdeen, is joined by sound artist and producer SHHE and choreographer and multi-disciplinary artist Samir Kennedy to explore how our listening will change in the future and how those possible futures of listening will transform us and our engagement with others.

Suk-Jun Kim is a South Korean composer, sound artist and professor of electronic music and sound art at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. Kim is the author of Humming: the Study of Sound (Bloomsbury) and Hasla (Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg). In 2023, he initiated a large-scale sound studies and sound art project Futures of Listening by collaborating with the National Asian Culture Center (ACC) in South Korea and has led its Sound Lab Team as senior researcher between May and December 2023. Between 2024-25, Kim is the Principal Investigator for Futures of Listening: Water Knowledge from Two Cities, an ISPF ODA challenge-oriented research project funded by the British Academy.

SHHE is the alias of Dundee-based Scottish-Portuguese sound artist, musician and producer, Su Shaw. Her work explores themes of identity and connection at the intersection of sound and space, environment and ecology, and research and performance.
Sound works, performances and installations have been presented at V&A Dundee co-commissioned by MSCTY Tokyo, Sonica Glasgow, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Festival, Celtic Connections, Summerhall, Radiophrenia (Scotland) and in Portugal, Iceland, Spain, Brazil, Egypt, and Iraq-Kurdistan. Her eponymous debut album was released by One Little Independent Records and shortlisted for Scottish Album of the Year. Mini-album, ‘DÝRA’, was released in 2024. SHHE is a Cryptic Artist, alumna of Julie’s Bicycle Creative Climate Leadership programme and co-founder/producer of dundee radio club.

Samir Kennedy is an independent artist based between London and Marseille working at the intersections between choreography, performance, sound and video. He discovered performance through a choir concert at primary school, when a voice came out of his mouth that seemingly wasn’t his own. He quickly moved on to musical theatre, eventually finding contemporary dance where he finished his studies at Laban, UK in 2013, eventually graduating from the MA EXERCE programme at the Centre Chorégraphique Nationale de Montpellier in 2023. Since then he has established a diverse, interdisciplinary practice, working internationally across a range of contexts and roles— as performer, choreographer, director, sound designer and dramaturg working in established theatre venues to underground, experimental spaces, clubs and galleries. His work engages critically with themes of class, race, otherness, queerness, and abjection, centering the body as a site from which to explore and subvert the deployment of archetypal figures—such as the devil, the zombie, and the clown- he interrogates collective consciousness and cultural symbolism, using these figures as frameworks to examine intersectional identities. His approach blends aestheticized sociological markers with speculative narratives, destabilizing conventional representations and proposing alternative realities in which queer existentialism and liminal identities can be explored and reimagined. His formal interests are diverse and reflect the needs of each project but can be always understood as choreographic in their treatment of aural, visual and temporal fields. His works have been presented with Actoral, Battersea Arts Centre, Centre For Live Art Yorkshire, ICI- CCN Montpellier, Humber Street Gallery, Rote Fabrik, SPILL Festival, Sophiensaele, Southbank Centre, Les Mouvements, Les Urbaines, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Genève, Ménagerie de Verre, Théâtre de Vanves, Théâtre Garonne, The Place Theatre and Wainsgate Dances. In addition to his choreographic work, Samir is a burgeoning sound artist, His sonic compositions complement and expand the thematic concerns of his visual and performative work, creating immersive environments that seek to heighten the embodied experience of audiences. He has collaborated with Florence Peake, Kidows Kim, Theo Clinkard, Colette Sadler, Amit Noy, Liam Warren, Sam Williams, and Olive Hardy creating original sound scores for both live performance and film works.