Politics of the Voice at Courtisane
Our voice is what differentiates us from one another and relates us to one another. The voice concerns the throat, saliva, and breath, the chest and lungs, the patina of experienced life, the pleasure of shaping sound waves, the acoustic emission that emits from mouth to ear, as grain, timbre, vibration, rhythm, language. It resonates at the confluence of the individual and the collective, the phonetic and the semantic, interior and exterior, sound and sense.
The voice is body and speech, sighs and cries, groans and moans, humming and hawing.
The voice is soul. Voice is noise. It’s what makes us unique as individuals but also powerful as a community. When attending to the question of resistance, of disagreement and redistribution, the emphasis is often on giving voice, speaking up, talking back, on the political act of voicing dissent, articulating demands, vocalizing laments. But what does it exactly mean ‘to voice’? How can we hear and understand the voice as something political?
Curated by Elaine Mitchener
In the context of the research project Echoes of Dissent (KASK & Conservatory / School of Arts Gent)
The voice emanates from within.
Here are seven artists who are not afraid of the sound of their own voices — whether embodied, sonic, visual, spoken, recited, conversed, unvoiced, silent.
They do not take their agency or freedom to express for granted.
They know these freedoms have been hard won.
This is the Politics of the Voice.
(Elaine Mitchener)
SESSION 1: The Politics of Vocal Music – 19:00 – 20:30
~ £pØ@n®diØ$n [LPOANRDIOSN] for Voice and City
Frederic Acquaviva // performance
~ I am an animal made of the city. A concrete animal
Loré Lixenberg (mezzo-soprano) // performance
~ Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of THE VOICE PARTY
Loré Lixenber // electro-acoustic / presentation
~ SOLO
Audrey Chen // performance
SESSION 2: The Politics of Voice Poetry – 21:00 – 22:00
~ In:action. Speak up.
Nhã Thuyên // poetry reading, English & Vietnamese
spoken
~ new poems
Jay Bernard // poetry reading, English spoken
SESSION 3: The Politics of Speaking Out – 22:15 – 23:00
~ SPEAK[ING] OUT
Elaine Mitchener (voice) & Neil Charles (double bass and
electronics) //performance
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha – Exhibition 16:00 – 23:30
