Grounded in ideas of listening, attunement, and shared or embodied resonance, this conversation considers how creative methodologies—spanning sound, voice, philosophy, computation, and performance—can support re-thinking governance, decision-making, and collaboration. 

The panel, which will be a kind of listening score that audience members are invited into, will blend gestures, reflections, and conversation to explore listening not only as a topic, but as a shared composition, a space of attunement, and a soft, relational shift. Bringing together artists and researchers working across different disciplines, including Vivienne Griffin, Lola de la Mata, Xiaowen Zhu, and Adi Lerer, we'll explore how improvisation, rhythm, and relationality shape collective structures, questioning hierarchical models of participation and institutional engagement.

Rather than reinforcing extractive or transactional modes of involvement, this conversation explores openness, co-presence, and the generative unpredictability of collective processes—asking how artistic practices and methods can challenge institutional dynamics and expand the possibilities of collaboration and transformation.

Vivienne Griffin

Vivienne Griffin was born in Dublin, Ireland and studied fine art at Hunter City University New York supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. They work with digital and traditional media through drawings, video, sound and sculpture. They are a resident at Somerset House Studios, London and are represented by Bureau in NYC.

Lola de la Mata

Lola de la Mata is a conceptual sound artist, composer, and musician (theremin/violin/voice) based in Liverpool. Tinnitus and aural diversity are at the core of her research practice. In 2024, Lola won an Oram Award and a Sound of the Year Award for her experimental debut album ‘Oceans on Azimuth’ released in May to much acclaim (The Quietus, Electronic Sound Magazine, New Scientist, BBC Radio 6, Crack Magazine), with broadcast on BBC 3, BBC 6, BBC Merseyside, NTS and Resonance FM.

She has received commissions from the Riot Ensemble, Zubin Kanga, Nonclassical, Spitalfields Music Festival, Lisson Gallery, and crafted soundtracks for experimental film, documentary and the award winning feature film STOPMOTION (2024) by Robert Morgan.

Adi Lerer

Adi Lerer is a practice-based PhD researcher at Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London. Her thesis focuses on the role of public funded art institutions in the UK through the lens of the ‘civic’. Her research is informed by her curatorial practice on the Home from Home programme at Tate Liverpool for people seeking asylum and those with refugee status since 2019. Adi holds an MA in Exhibition Studies from Liverpool John Moores University, where her research focused on socially engaged art practice and its relationship to art institutions. During her MA studies, she wrote on the phenomena of international art biennials and the tension between global and local, looking at Liverpool Biennial as a case study. In 2023, she contributed an article in the Social Works? Journal with an essay titled ‘Paradoxes of EDI in UK publicly funded art institutions: Imagining pathways of reflexive social practice’. In the past, she worked in arts coordination roles at the National Gallery and the British Council, and has a background in theatre performance, having graduated from the Arts Educational School of Drama in London.

Xiaowen Zhu

Xiaowen Zhu has worked internationally in Shanghai, New York, Los Angeles, London and Berlin as an institutional director, author and lecturer. She is currently the Director of esea contemporary, the UK’s only non-profit art centre specialising in presenting and platforming artists and art practices that identify with and are informed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cultural backgrounds. She is a member of the British Council's Arts and Creative Economy Advisory Group.

Since assuming leadership, Zhu has led esea contemporary through a pivotal transformation, reshaping its identity with a broader, more inclusive vision centred on community engagement and cross-cultural dialogue. Under her direction, the organisation has developed a dynamic and multifaceted programme encompassing exhibitions, residencies, performances, talks, workshops, digital commissions, and long-term community initiatives. Headquartered in Manchester, esea contemporary now operates with an increasingly international perspective, expanding its reach through meaningful collaborations and project-based support from institutions including Liverpool Biennial, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), Fondazione Torino Musei, the Bagri Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation, Danish Arts Foundation, and The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, to name just a few. Through this sustained and ambitious approach, Zhu has re-positioned esea contemporary as a vital platform for art practices informed by East and Southeast Asian perspectives, and a leading voice in contemporary cultural discourse both in the UK and globally. 

Zhu is the author of artist book Oriental Silk (Hatje Cantz, 2020) and collection of short stories Encounters (Shanghai Educational Publishing House, 2022). Zhu has given lectures and talks at London School of Economics and Political Science, Goldsmiths, University of London, Heidelberg University, Lund University, University of Westminster, Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, Syracuse University, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, among others. She is listed by Apollo magazine as a 40 Under 40 Asia Pacific Thinker.