Claire Tabouret: I am Spacious, Singing Flesh

New Sound , 2020

In this paper we discuss the exhibition Post-Opera, a complex and provocative curatorial project by Kris Dittel and Jelena Novak, in which the changeable relations between the voice and the (human) body are investigated from the creative and theoretical perspectives, relying on juxtaposing and reflection between visual arts, technology and opera. Firstly, in the paper we examine the curatorial procedure, in its shift from the mediatory function between the work and the audience towards the practice, which intervenes in both of these domains and results in an exhibition as an autonomous art object. In the second part we interpret the politics and the effectiveness of the singing and the speaking voice in contemporary art and culture, while in the third part we write about the resemantization of the relation between the singing body and the sung voice within ‘installing the operatic’.

Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

Music, as sung and listened to, has been described in many a tale as powerful and transformative. Yet, the important question is not so much if that claim is true or whether it may be verified, but what kind of power and transformation are alluded to in those mythical and literary sources? Taking these symbolic claims and elaborating on their possible meaning, alongside thinkers such as Carolyne Abbate or Roland Barthes, proceeds to find ways in which these claims may suggest different roles that music and singing play in human lives. As much as current musicological and anthropological academic narratives point to the power and its negotiation in society, there is more to singing voices' charms than this. The author points to an important transformation that happens when the human existential qualities found in the voice's imperfections (its materiality) are matched with the music's aesthetic qualities (its beauty, sublimity, its symmetry, its impression) to transform the listener and make her listen.

Opera Quarterly, 2017

Callas’s voice gives rise to unusually polarized reactions, from devotion to disgust. As an artist, Callas was judged as “temperamental,” “out of control,” unreliable due to her walkouts; while Callas-the-voice was considered “mesmerizing,” “terrible,” having “‘lost’ her voice” from “ferocious dieting,” and also out of control. Filled with judgmental language about her body weight and questions of control, voice, and character, the case was seemingly ripe for a feminist critique that addressed Callas’s voice and body head on. However, within the concepts and vocabulary that are currently available, women find themselves the object of the gaze of assessment and criticism. For female singers, this takes place in the visual as well as the sonorous realm. A recent revival of organology, critical organology, offers a new inroad into considering the body and its materiality outside self-perpetuating dogmatic language. In this article, I first draw out the main points of the public discourse around Callas’s voice and body; second, engaging Susan Bordo’s work, I consider how these narratives about the voice and body rely on ancient and contemporary sentiments about the female body, rather than on current knowledge about the voice; and third, I examine common assertions about Callas’s voice through what I conceive as a critical organological approach to voice research. In doing so, I seek to contribute to a discourse that will separate voice and body from gendered disparities; find a way to deal head-on with voice as a material, vibrational practice; and illuminate where and how vocal vocabulary and concepts are weighed down by millennia of gendered misconceptions.

x 61 cm FR Le parcours de Claudia Larcher se démarque par une pratique polymorphe et complexe, qui se confronte sans hésitation aux modèles et aux histoires de l'art. Dans un contexte marqué par la course à l'originalité « post-médium », elle fait preuve de courage en instaurant un dialogue constructif entre ses oeuvres et les éléments fondamentaux de la transmédialité, qu'elle lit, justement, à partir de son apparition, qui date du début du XXe siècle, et dont elle maîtrise avec intelligence les règles et les enjeux. Aborder son travail signifie donc s'immerger -avec un certain plaisir -dans une constellation conceptuelle qui a contribué à la définition des « modernismes » et à la formulation des postulats des avant-gardes historiques. L'artiste semble flirter avec des vocabulaires formels qui se veulent reconnaissables et qui entraînent le spectateur dans une nouvelle expérience de leur application. Formée à l'Universität für angewandte Kunst de Vienne, Claudia Larcher est à l'aise avec une multiplicité de formats et de techniques qui complexifient, sans le rendre pédant, son cheminement artistique. Il s'agit d'une approche « matérialiste » de l'art, qui évoque les théories de Richard Sennett sur l'artisanat et sur la nécessité de sa réhabilitation dans la société contemporaine (1). Loin d'entendre le mot artisanat comme un retour à des techniques ancestrales, le sociologue américain propose plutôt la formulation d'une sorte d'idéal-type qui s'applique aussi bien au programmateur informatique ou au médecin qu'à l'artiste. Ainsi compris, il devient presque une posture poétique, que Claudia Larcher assume dans son travail et ce à partir de ses toutes premières expériences. (1) Richard Sennet, « Ce que sait la main. La culture de l'artisanat », Paris, Albin Michel, 2010.

Through a consideration of the underwater singing practiced by contemporary American soprano and performance artist Juliana Snapper, this article addresses the inherent relation between materiality and the voice, the sensed and the singular. I focus on the physical and sensory properties of singers’ and listeners’ bodies; the space within and the matter through which sound disperses; and how the relation between these aspects plays an integral part in what it feels like to sing, and what it is possible to hear. I aim to demonstrate that a sensory reading of singing and listening may capture dimensions of the voice that are difficult, if not impossible, to account for using conventional analyses of music or standard readings of vocal repertoire. However, a sensory approach to sound does not offer a stable explanation of what sound or music is. Instead each such account unveils a composite manifestation of our understanding of sound at a given moment in time and space.

"In this keynote lecture, I argue that the radical vocality that has marked the post-modern stage and performance art gives rise to a re-‘enchantment’ of the disembodied voice. This is particularly induced by the principle of the acousmatic, which is most inherently part of our aural cultures and technologies. Taking various examples of radical voices in contemporary performance and music theatre, I attempt to debunk the myths surrounding the disembodied voice. I wish to place it under scrutiny to uncover the processes of how we perceive bodies in voices. My concerns are twofold. The first part of my talk focuses on the theory of the disembodied voice. I discuss how an excess of auditory intensities, which is constituted by what I term ‘vocal distress’, invokes the desire to reinstate immediacy with or locate identity into the voice by attributing a metaphorical body, a ‘voice-body’ (Steven Connor 2000). I argue that this desire propels a necessity to position one’s self in relation to the vocal excess. The second part looks more closely on the ramifications of such a voice-body on our modes of auditory perception as virtual positions in relation to what we see in the vocal performance. This inquiry about our listening modalities includes a critique on the understanding of oral and literate modes of listening (Derrick de Kerckhove 1997) as mutually exclusive. I substantiate these theoretical considerations by means of two small case studies: The Wooster Group’s La Didone and Franziska Bauman’s Electric Renaissance, respectively."

Tempo, 2015

BROADSHEET, 2014

Anna Bofill Levi: Música de Cambra: Barcelona Modern Project: Marc Moncusí [CD recording] (p. 28-30). Solfa recordings, DL. GI-178-2011, 2011

Aquest C D es el resultar de l'enregistramenr qu e es va realitzar eI 19 d'abril de 2010 a I'Audi rori de Ca ixa Caralunya a l'edifici d'Ant oni Ga udf, La Pedrera, de Barcelon a, en mot iu d'un concert-homenatge a Ann a Bofill Levi. Co ncert inrerp retar pels solistes i el conjunr Barcelona Modern Project sora la direcci6 de Marc M oncusf, i preced it per un col-Ioq ui sobre l'autora am b la parti cipacio de Ma rta Cureses (Universlrat d' O viedo) i de l'arqu itecra i musicologa Helena Martin Nieva. Este CD es el resultado de la grabacion qu e se realizo eI 19 de abril de 2010 en eIAuditorio de Ca ixa Caralunya en el edificio de Anroni Gaudl, La Pedrera, de Barcelona con motivo del conciertohomenaje a Anna Bofill Levi, interpretado por los solista s y el conjunto Barcelona Modern Proje ct dirigidos por Marc Moncusi, y precedido de un coloquio sobre la aurora con la participacion de Marta Cure ses (Un iversidad de Ovi edo) y de la arquitecta y mu sico loga Helena Martin N ieva. This CD is the result of the recording made on the 19 April 2010 at the Caixa Catalunya Auditorium in Antoni Gaudi's building, La Pedrera, in Barcelona, on the occasion of the tribute-concert to Anna Bofill Levi, by the Barcelona Modern Project ensemble and solists conducted by Marc Moncusi and preceded by a colloquy on the author introduced by Marta Cureses (University of Oviedo) and the architect and musicologist Helena Marrin Nieva.