EAVESDROPPING: The Erotics of Listening

Why does overhearing feel so intimate?

This Olio explores the strange emotional and psychological pleasure of listening to conversations not meant for us. Moving through the worlds of cinema, opera, sound art, and everyday life, artist/composer Whitney George examines how listening can become a form of desire, fantasy, suspense, voyeurism, and participation — and why fragmented or partial speech often feels more seductive than direct access.

Part lecture, part listening session, and part cultural séance, The Erotics of Listening asks why voices heard through walls, telephones, recordings, and overheard moments continue to fascinate us — and what it means to find ourselves emotionally drawn toward private worlds we were never invited into.

Whitney George is a composer, conductor, and interdisciplinary artist whose work moves between tragedy and ecstasy, intimacy and the macabre. Her music is haunted by ghosts and love — exploring irrationality, nightmare, and memory, and sonically seeking lost objects and hidden subjects.

Across installation, stage, and film, she builds environments to be inhabited rather than watched: 1919 New Orleans under a serial killer's shadow, a 1920s speakeasy in literary Harlem, a Chinatown family inside the 1900 Bubonic Plague. She is the artistic director and conductor of The Curiosity Cabinet, the ensemble she has led since 2009, and her recordings appear on Pinch Records.

She holds a BFA from CalArts, an MM from Brooklyn College, and a DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center. She is on faculty at Luna Lab and teaches composition privately in Brooklyn.

Evening Flow

7 PM – Doors open. Settle in, grab a drink, and meet a friend.
8 PM – The Olio begins: an intimate, interactive lecture and guided exploration.
9 PM – We shift into a social experience, discussing ideas with others in the room while the teacher joins and floats between conversations.
10 PM - Last call at the bar and we'll start to wind down the evening.