You Never Listen
June 14 – 20, 2026
«You Never Listen» is a collaboration by ixdm.distro and I Never Read
Live Stream:
https://www.ineverread.com/
This year, the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM) at HGK Basel will host the live radio program «You Never Listen», reimagining its yearly publishing platform – ixdm.distro – as a temporary radio station: a hybrid between an on-air publishing space, a reading studio, and a walk-in listening area.
Extending broadcasting into experimental forms, Maria Maddalena Lenzi and Agnes Leclaire will host the radio programme and the music sessions during the fair days.
If «I Never Read» and «You Never Listen,» what type of collaboration can emerge?
Radio Program
Sunday
14:30 «You Never Listen»: What do you Mean? Opening of the radio programme with ixdm.distro, hosted by Agnes Leclaire and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
15:00 The Basel Collection, radio launch of a publication by Angela Grosso Ciponte, Jana Heinemann and Martin Woellenstein. A brochure offering proposals for transforming the fashion industry and regulating the export of textile waste.
16:00 IXDM on air? – Matthias Böttger and Ann Mbuti on the Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures broadcasting.
16:30 Subtropical Ghosts and Memory Potions: Towards Brewing an Affective Archive of Yerba Mate, a conversation and live experiment by Camila Chebez. Through spoken word, this contribution follows Yerba Mate (Ilex paraguariensis) between northern Argentina and Switzerland, weaving together botanical notation, expedition diaries, love letters, lullabies, and Tony Mate ads. As a Mate-offering, it traces archival legacies shaped by green colonialism and asks us to move beyond anthropocentric thinking, re-attuning instead to vegetal temporalities and the wider ecological bodies that connect us.
17:30 With(in) Timewise by Weiyu Chen and Liou Yuh-Chyi. A reading of fragments from an essay-calendar that treats time as slower, more situated, and more attentive — followed by an invitation to create your own solar terms on site.
21:30 Happy Birthday I Never Read! Sound closing by Agnes Leclaire.
Monday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About Who Should (Co-)create the Art Space. Forum session hosted by Carolina Brunelli from Dock Kunstraum, Archiv und Ausleihe and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
16:30 Eve Sedgwick Reparative Reading Group. Collective reading and conversation by Ines Kleesattel, Ludgi Porto, Lucie Kolb, and Linsey Rendell of excerpts from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick on paranoid and reparative reading.
17:30 Matters of Organisation: New Institutions for New Narratives. Reading and conversation by Reto Riggs on climate change and what we must consider in building alternative institutions capable of holding space for genuinely generating new narratives.
18:30 Michael Stucki presents a live demo of analog video, glitches, and circuit bending.
19:00 (M)eine selbstgestickte Klassentheorie by Ledermann Fini.
19:15 “Maybe you shouldn’t start with 1000 Copies”: Cautionary tales of independent publishing. Chrysa Chouliara of Nightcall Editions in conversation on the dos and don’ts of self-publishing — a science communicator by day, creator by night.
21:30 Happy Birthday I Never Read! Sound closing by Agnes Leclaire.
Tuesday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About (Independent) Publishing Constraints. Forum session hosted by exhibitors from the fair and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
16:30 A Story of Folly, Mirages, and Great Terrible Ideas. Reading by Felipe Castelblanco revolves around the start of a long-term project through which the author sailed around the world in a tiny makeshift raft. The session describes how a 10-year project started from a simple misunderstanding and total ignorance of seafaring.
21:00 On Connection. Conversation by Anna Laederach and Ivana Jović, thinking with Kae Tempest’s “On Connection”. Starting from the idea that creativity is “any act of love, any act of making” and connection a way of “landing in the present tense, fully immersed in whatever occupies you,” the lecturer duo reflects on collective making and learning processes as vessels for solidarity in severely fragmented times marked by overwhelm, grief and isolation.
Wednesday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About Sound as Place-Maker. Forum session hosted by Agnes Leclaire.
16:30 Live Jukebox. Sound session by Ann Mbuti.
21:00 what a small world! by 2minimeters (Wu Heng and Sezen Ergün).
21:30 Waste, space, design and the way we forget about our discards. Agnes Leclaire in conversation with Alessandro Pellanda.
Thursday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About Fair Pay and Fair Play Practices in the Arts. Forum session hosted by Ozan Güngör and Catherin Schöberl from Unofficial Hiking Society and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
16:30 Collagenartige Lesung von “Was bleibt” (Julia Sahli, Luana Capaul, Nils Niederhauser, Malena Schmid and Moira Lansdell). Eine collageartige Lesung von Textfragmenten. Wir erzählen von dem Leben und den Beziehungen unserer Grossmütter, und zeigen durch eine feministische Linse auf, was diese mit uns zu tun haben.
18:00 The Space After the Work by Noah Andrea Müller.
18:15 be careful what you don’t say! Klara Jeltsch presents findings from her master’s thesis on democratic discourse alongside a card game of self-reflection questions — food for thought for listeners and a spark for conversation.
18:30 Käsesyndikat by Harvest Salon (Livni Holtz and Nicolas Seiler) – a live activation bringing a cheese wheel into the radio space and inviting listeners to share their cheese stories after a taste. Through a short interview format, the session opens a conversation about alternative economic systems and collective food practices.
21:30 Live Jukebox. Sound session by Ann Mbuti.
Friday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About Civic Work and Institutional Transformation. Forum session hosted by Matylda Krzykowski from CIVIC and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
16:30 Widerständige Handarbeit in conversation — HyperWerk’s latest publication.
17:00 IXDM Publications Launch Celebration Event followed by a convivial Apero.
19:00 Transversal Design Publication Vol. 02 — A Book on Friendship. Book launch activation by the MA Transversal Design.
21:00 Proximity to You. Soundscape by Lombardi Claudia, Chen Stanford, Kim Han Yeonji, Stirnimann Nora.
Saturday
16:00 «You Never Listen» When I Speak About How Documentation and Archiving Shape Cultural Work. Forum session hosted by Vera Zurbrügg and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
16:30 Afternoon Reading Room: Xenofiction with Linsey Rendell, Lou:s Voelkel, Sarah Badr and Gwen Chu.
17:30 Communication Without Language: On Digital Affection, Games and Mythological Storytelling. Lou:s Voelkel, Benedict Henshaw and Maria Maddalena Lenzi in conversation.
21:00 «You Never Listen» is a Temporary Condition. Reflections and voices of the closing session. Forum session hosted by ixdm.distro, Agnes Leclaire and Maria Maddalena Lenzi.
20:30 “Me? I’m not a chismosa but…” A on air gossip session by G4briel Elvira. Chismosa – a word commonly used in South America to describe someone who loves to gossip.
21:30 Happy Birthday I Never Read! Sound closing by Agnes Leclaire.
The ixdm.distro radio programme and temporary radio station is organized by Maria Maddalena Lenzi with ixdm.distro, which is Lucie Kolb, Felipe Castelblanco, Anna Laederach, Ann Mbuti and friends.
«You Never Listen» can — for some — sounds like a sassy remark. Breaking uncomfortable repetitions and uneven patterns, this spontaneous expression rarely emerges out of indifference, ultimately signaling the desire to be acknowledged and to relate otherwise.
You Never Listen is a call for care and the urgency to pay attention. Somewhere between frustration and its transformative counterpart, the sentence asks the interlocutor for a shift in attitude: how is listening taking place?
Conceived as a temporary radio station, «You Never Listen» opens a space for conversations, experiments, and collective exchange through broadcasts, readings, forum sessions, music, and all kinds of encounters, where guests and hosts participate, respond, disagree, and ultimately just converse with one another.
The radio station functions as an infrastructure for circulation rather than a channel of dissemination operating as a space of collective listening and situated transmission.
Each day’s programme opens with a forum, inviting publics to engage in discussion and creating a space where topics and perspectives that are systematically unheard within the arts, cultural, and publishing fields can be debated.
Invited hosts will facilitate the discussion by drawing on contributions from those present as well as insights collected throughout the previous day via the «You Never Listen» booth: an intimate, free space where people are invited to share thoughts, experiences, and perspectives anonymously.
The ixdm.distro will also be present in the space with a display booth presenting works by radio contributors and a cozy reading room where everyone can have a break and read.
We kindly invite you all to join us on Friday 19th to celebrate the launches of two publications, from HyperWerk and MA Transversal Design, with radio sessions, activations, and a convivial Apero from 16:30 onwards. Celebrations!
Throughout the week, the venue will be activated by a wide range of experimental contributions featuring students, alumnx, staff members, and friends of the IXDM community.
«You Never Listen» unfolds through collective readings, publishing experiments, sound explorations, conversations, and playful encounters. From xenofeminist reading groups and zines to gossip sessions, glitch experiments, live jukeboxes, love letters, and reflections on alternative ways of making and sharing knowledge, the programme invites us to listen differently to voices, stories, materials, and each other.
We promise it will be fun: but don’t forget to bring your ears to listen carefully, because you’ll find many around you.