International Journal of Education & the Arts

Citation: Buller, R. Epp (2024). Taking Care: A handheld practice of listening. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 25(si1.21). http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea25si1.21

We live in a world of converging crises--COVID, climate, and war--and we desperately need to “take care” and “repair” our world if we hope to “live in it as well as possible” (Tronto and Fisher, 1990). I propose that an important place to start is by listening, specifically by facilitating and enacting relational listening through artistic practice. I offer my participatory project Taking Care (2018-present) as a case study through which to consider listening as an orientation, a reciprocal gesture that invites being in relationship. In Taking Care, participants write stories about a time in which they felt cared for. In exchange, I listen to the stories by embroidering selected passages onto fabric in public performances, making visible these often unseen labors of care. This piece contextualizes Taking Care within histories of feminist listening, the Slow movement, and intergenerational, matrilineal sharing of artistic knowledge.