In Ancient Greece, there was a superstition that associated high-pitched voices with evil. Humans differ in their nature to other animals, through their ability to articulate with sound and create ‘logos’ (speech). In the primitive stage of consciousness, "the brain was ‘bicameral’, with the right hemisphere producing uncontrollable ‘voices’ attributed to the gods which the left hemisphere processed into speech" (Ong, 2002, pg. 30). It was after the figure of Odysseus appeared that these voices no longer mattered any more and the self-conscious mind was established. The story of Odysseus symbolizes the beginning of a Western society, that privileged rationality. Odysseus, a clever man, can resist any temptation his body falls in by using his brain and speech. This is how he manages to safely reach his destination- a more primitive mind would be allured. It is through 'logos', humans can develop dialogue and democratic processes of communication and decision-making. All the other forms of expression can be considered wild and therefore irrational.
\pagebreak
In Ancient Greece, there was a superstition that associated high-pitched voices with evil. Humans differ in their nature to other animals, through their ability to articulate with sound and create ‘logos’ (speech). In the primitive stage of consciousness, "the brain was ‘bicameral’, with the right hemisphere producing uncontrollable ‘voices’ attributed to the gods which the left hemisphere processed into speech" (Ong, 2002, pg. 30). It was after the figure of Odysseus appeared that these voices no longer mattered any more and the self-conscious mind was established. The story of Odysseus symbolizes the beginning of a Western society, that privileged rationality. Odysseus, a clever man, can resist any temptation his body falls in by using his brain and speech. This is how he manages to safely reach his destination- a more primitive mind would be allured. It is through 'logos', humans can develop dialogue and democratic processes of communication and decision-making. All the other forms of expression can be considered wild and therefore irrational.\
Aristotle and his contemporaries believed that vocal sounds were based on the genitals of a person, which is why men speak at a low pitch, because of "the tension placed on a man’s vocal chords by his testicles functioning as loom weights" (Carson, 1996, pg. 119). The high-pitched utterance of women, called 'ololyga', which was a ritual practice dedicated to important events in life- such as like the birth of a child or the death of a person, was considered a 'pollution' of civic space. If expressed in public, they would create chaos and provoke madness. In mythology, when Odysseus awakens on the island of Phaiakia, he is "surrounded by the shrieking of women (...) and goes on to wonder what sort of savages or super-natural beings can be making such a racket". These women were Nausica and her girlfriends, described by Homer as "wild girls who roam the mountains in attendance upon Artemis" (Carson, 1996, pg. 125). Similarly, Alkaios, an ancient poet who had been expelled from the city, where public assemblies took place, was disgusted by the presence of women’s voices talking 'nonsense'. In the ancient world, women were excluded, occupying the margins of society, the dark and formless space where speech, and thus politics, were absent. This disorderly, loud female noise was related to an uncivilized, wild space and sound which was deemed politically incorrect. It seems like these primitive 'uncontrollable voices' became related to some modes of address that provided reminders of the past condition of the human brain, judging it to have a malignant influence.\
Today women in public life worry if their voices are too light or high to command respect. Politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, for instance, were trained to learn how to speak in public, to deepen their voice, in order to be taken as seriously as a male speaker would be (Carson, 1996, pg. 120). Anne Carson observes that the female voices in public is related to madness, witchery, bestiality, disorder, death and chaos. And thus has to stay hidden from sight (Carson, 1996, pg. 120).
@ -86,36 +85,36 @@ Ong mentions that “[a]t the same time, with telephone, radio, television and v
## The mediation of voice through multiplication
Urban space spaces host a variety of political activities such as squatting, demonstrations, displays of the politics of culture and identity which are visible on the street and which are not dependent on massive media technologies. Since the beginning of human societies there has been a need for gatherings and sharing knowledge through verbal communication. Today the agonistic dynamics of primitive oral thought, which have effected the development of Western literate culture, have been "institutionalized by the ‘art’ of rhetoric, and by the related dialectic of Socrates and Plato, which furnished agonistic oral verbalization with a scientific base" (Ong, 2002, pg. 45). Agonistic
On the other hand, speech act, based on Wittgenstein's philosophical theories, is distinct from rhetoric and reasoned argument in that it includes real-life interactions and requires appropriate use of language within a given culture or context. It expresses more than the description of a meaning; speech act embraces the way the language is used and communicates what should be done and not what does this mean. Speech act is a performative action, within which somebody performs, makes things happen and creates a space for them, rather than simply stating a fact. The presence of the bodies in a speech act provides a layer of trust and safety. These bodies with their voices create and inhabit the space they are part of. In this way they materialize their needs. In a contemporary context, public speeches are happening in both physical and digital spaces with the help of several media like internet (podcasts and live streaming) and radio (community radios). In the diverse media landscape individuals or groups can easily form and communicate speeches happening in a physical space by themselves without being dependent on a newspaper, publisher, state or other institutional power. In the Occupy Movement <sup>[1](#myfootnote1)</sup> both known and unknown public speakers would spread their messages to an audience by standing in a public square. This action followed the principles of the Speaker's Corner, which is an area where open-air public speaking and debate are allowed and it was first established in Britain at the end of 19th century. It "symbolizes the kind of forum for debate sought for today’s post-industrial, highly mediated cities, encouraging face-to-face interaction and real-life conversation, albeit arranged by people texting each other, recorded by shooting and uploading video on YouTube, reported on twitter or documented on face book" (Speakers Corner Trust, no date). It is "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). That is an example of the establishment of a speaking space, which is legitimate for public discourse and open for new forms of address. For example, in my project, *Sound Acts in Victoria Square*, I made a performative action of speech and vocal dialogue, which created a temporary space that revealed excluded forms of address in the square. My actions were conversations with women and broadcasts of their recorded voices back in the square, in a form of speech act but without their presence. This performative action opened a discussion in the square, changing for a while its character, about their exclusion and how voice occupies space. In my current project, I create, again, temporary spaces that occupy a proexisted public space for a while, like Leeszaal (a self-organised library in West Rotterdam). There I explore with others the capabilities of public voice, with workshops and meetings, intervening in moments of the library's life.\
A space, where is open for dialogue and speech acts, can facilitate a democracy of agonism. Part of the occupy events would be public speeches in the context of public assemblies, often delivered by philosophers, writers, academics, resistance figures on the site of the occupied space. The audience would often be very big and thus an amplifier was needed for the voice of the speaker to be heard by everyone. However, in the case of Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphones and megaphones, were only allowed outside in public spaces when special permission from the municipality was given <sup>[1](#myfootnote2)</sup>. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy became the 'human microphone', as they called it. This means that all together they would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). The public space seems to exist in a more 'primitive' and embodied expression for the ones that lack platforms of representation.\
Saskia Sassen (‘Saskia Sassen’, 2012) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face-to-face communication. According to Sassen, this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting, outside of the formal system. Kanaveli (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012) maintains that something that is visible and can be heard is reality and can create and give power. Site specificity is also very characteristic in these cases.\
From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of media technology to presence and resistance, as an amplified process, in public. Those people, because of their multilayered relation to technology, like social media, are able to spread words and make them disperse virally on the Internet. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos documenting #occupy, the crowd uses a lot of different media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers on Livestream platforms. This process was also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces in diverse networks. At the same time there is a temporariness in this action as internet platforms are constantly changing or disappearing. So, the events and speeches appear in fragments of videos, transcriptions, and conversations in forums. It is more likely that the users, protesters are leaving as many traces online as possible; fragments of resistance. The multilayered communication of events is manifested in their urgent and fast multiplication, in different forms and spaces. Together with the public event of a crowd protesting, "there is also a media event that forms across time and space, calling for the demonstrations, so some set of global connections is being articulated" (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013, pg. 197). The use of all these media doesn't require any special skill and the presence of an expert is not required. So, mainstream media journalists are not always needed for news to spread to a wider public. This also means that messages aren't always edited or altered by large news media companies. "With cellphones, iPads and video cameras affixed to laptops, Occupy participants showed that almost anyone could broadcast live news online. In addition, they could help build an audience for their video by inviting people to talk about what they were seeing" (Preston, 2011)
Urban space spaces host a variety of political activities such as squatting, demonstrations, displays of the politics of culture and identity which are visible on the street and which are not dependent on massive media technologies. Since the beginning of human societies there has been a need for gatherings and sharing knowledge through verbal communication. Today the agonistic dynamics of primitive oral thought, which have effected the development of Western literate culture, have been "institutionalized by the ‘art’ of rhetoric, and by the related dialectic of Socrates and Plato, which furnished agonistic oral verbalization with a scientific base" (Ong, 2002, pg. 45). 'Agonistic pluralism' – a term proposed by Chantal Mouffe – is a type of democracy that acknowledges the multiplicity of voices and values, as well as conflicts of contemporary pluralist societies. It is based on 'agonism', instead of competitive antagonism, which means that people can see each other as adversaries who disagree, rather than enemies. Mouffe says that "a pluralist democracy
cannot be to reach a rational consensus in the public sphere" (Mouffe, 2000a, pg. 104), because such a consensus cannot exist as it always implies a form of exclusion. Agonism can be achieved by providing channels through which all collective passions can be expressed and mobilized towards democratic approaches between adversaries – rather than a process of rational persuasion that refuses the existence of such passions.\
On the other hand, speech act, is distinct from rhetoric and reasoned argument in that it makes something in real life. It is when a statement performs an action, like when a priest pronounces a husband and wife. It requires appropriate use of language within a given culture or context. It expresses more than the description of a meaning. Speech act is a performative action, whereby somebody performs, makes things happen and creates a space for them, rather than simply stating a fact. The presence of the body in a speech act provides a layer of trust and safety. These bodies with their voices create and inhabit the space they are part of. In this way they materialize their needs. In a contemporary context, public speeches are happening in both physical and digital spaces with the help of several media like internet (podcasts and live streaming) and radio (community radios). In the diverse media landscape individuals or groups can easily form and communicate speeches happening in a physical space by themselves without being dependent on a newspaper, publisher, the state or other institutional power. In the Occupy Movement <sup>[1](#myfootnote1)</sup> both known and unknown public speakers would spread their messages to an audience by standing in a public square. This action followed the principles of the Speaker's Corner, which is an area where open-air public speaking and debate are allowed and it was first established in Britain at the end of 19th century. It "symbolizes the kind of forum for debate sought for today’s post-industrial, highly mediated cities, encouraging face-to-face interaction and real-life conversation, albeit arranged by people texting each other, recorded by shooting and uploading video on YouTube, reported on twitter or documented on face book" (Speakers Corner Trust, no date). It is "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). That is an example of the establishment of a speaking space, which is legitimate for public discourse and open for new forms of address. For example, in my project, *Sound Acts in Victoria Square*, I made a performative action of speech and vocal dialogue, which created a temporary space that revealed excluded forms of address in the square. My actions were conversations with women and broadcasts of their recorded voices back in the square, in a form of speech act but without their presence. This performative action opened a discussion within the square, changing for a while its character, about their exclusion and how voice occupies space. My current project is about the amplification of female voices (and other form of excluded voices) in public spaces and ways of channeling them. My approach, again, is to create, temporary 'safe' spaces of discussion that occupy public space – I focus in West Rotterdam, an area of immigrants, and Leeszaal, a self-organised library in that area. There I explore with others the capabilities of public voice, with workshops and meetings, intervening in moments of the library's and street's life.\
A space, where is open for dialogue, can facilitate a democracy of agonism. Part of the occupy events would be public speeches in the context of public assemblies, often delivered by philosophers, writers, academics, resistance figures on the site of the occupied space. The audience would often be very big and therefore an amplifier was needed for the voice of the speaker to be heard by everyone. However, in the case of Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphones and megaphones, were only allowed outside, in public spaces when special permission from the municipality was given <sup>[1](#myfootnote2)</sup>. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Moraine, 2011). The participants of #occupy became the 'human microphone', as they called it. This means that all together they would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). The public space seems to exist in a more 'primitive' and embodied expression for those that lack platforms of representation.\
Saskia Sassen (‘Saskia Sassen’, 2012) observes that in cities today a big mix of people coexist. Those who lack power can make themselves present through face-to-face communication. According to Sassen, this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting, outside of the formal system. Kanaveli (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012) maintains that something that is visible and can be heard is reality and can create and give power. Site specificity is also very characteristic in these cases.\
From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of media technology to presence and resistance, as an amplified process, in public. Those people, because of their multilayered relation to technology, like social media, are able to spread words and make them disperse virally on the Internet. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos documenting #occupy, the crowd uses a lot of different media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers on Livestream platforms. This process was also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces in diverse networks. At the same time there is a temporariness in this action as internet platforms are constantly changing or disappearing. So, events and speeches appear in fragments of videos, transcriptions, and conversations in forums. It is more likely that the users, protesters leave as many traces online as possible; fragments of resistance. The multilayered communication of events is manifested in their urgent and fast multiplication, in different forms and spaces. Together with the public event of a crowd protesting, "there is also a media event that forms across time and space, calling for the demonstrations, so some set of global connections is being articulated" (Butler and Athanasiou, 2013, pg. 197). The use of all these media doesn't require any special skill and the presence of an expert is not required. So, mainstream media journalists are not always needed for news to spread to a wider public. This also means that messages aren't always edited or altered by large news media companies. "With cellphones, iPads and video cameras affixed to laptops, Occupy participants showed that almost anyone could broadcast live news online. In addition, they could help build an audience for their video by inviting people to talk about what they were seeing" (Preston, 2011)
Multiplication could be seen as a way of manifesting parallel, multiple presences in diverse private and public places. For example radio and television allowed public speakers, such as politicians, to speak simultaneously to so many people, situated in diverse places, than ever before. There are two ways of multiplication in the above examples. One is through a unified collective voice in public, and the other is messages through a networked web. The first one is about a performative action based on plurality of the 'bodies' involved. It includes the example of the 'human microphone' and 'ololyga', the female collective utterance. Even though the last may not be a direct expression of resistance, it was an alternative temporary and informal mode of address that was suppressed and used only for specific occasions, that became acceptable to the society at those times. The second case, the web, reminds me of the very ancient practice of gossiping. It has a negative connotation especially when connected with women. However, sometimes this is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for those that practice it. In the relay of messages, the Internet and social media have the same 'baton effect' and even though this is misused by mainstream political voices, it also serves the voiceless.
## The mediation of voice through amplification
At some occasions, the amplification of the voice, as a mode of prohibition and presence, becomes possible both literally and metaphorically. This means that somebody can amplify their voice with the use of a microphone and megaphone so to strengthen the signal on the spot, and at the same time to make themselves loud and present, so as to be heard. For example, anti-fascist microphonic demonstrations in Greece, occupy a public square for a couple of hours using speakers, microphones or megaphones broadcasting music and speech. It was first Nazis, who used amplified technology to occupy public space. For example, in 1932, Nazis used vans with loudspeakers attached to the outside, in order to attract attention of the citizens. During the election campaign, they would rent a van like that and play speeches, songs and party slogans. This *Lautsprecherwagen*, as it was called, “opened up the possibility for penetrating public and private spaces with amplified sounds” (Birdsall, 2012, pg. 39). At the same time, the amplification achieved by the vans intensified an ‘acoustic conflict’, which means that Nazis would dominate the city with mediated acoustic technology, overriding the sounds of political opponents. Hitler would use multiple technologies- such as radio, loudspeakers, Lautsprecherwagen- at the same time and constantly. Multiplication and amplification were his main approaches for establishing presence over others and influence the citizens. The difference with the examples given above is that he would enforce silence on the citizens, who were listeners and never broadcasters of their own speeches. The Nazi party had the economic capability to use advanced technology for propaganda. Later on, these technologies became more accessible and used by protesters, anarchists and leftist groups to declare presence and being heard in private an public spaces of the city, resisting the dominant voice of the state.
On some occasions, the amplification of the voice, as a mode of prohibition and presence, becomes possible both literally and metaphorically. This means that somebody can amplify their voice with the use of a microphone and megaphone so to strengthen the signal on the spot, and at the same time to make themselves loud and present, so as to be heard. For example, anti-fascist microphonic demonstrations in Greece, occupy a public square for a couple of hours using speakers, microphones or megaphones broadcasting music and speech. In fact, it was first the Nazis, who used amplified technology to occupy public space. In 1932, for example, Nazis used vans with loudspeakers attached to the outside, in order to attract attention of the citizens. During the election campaign, they would rent a van and play speeches, songs and party slogans. This *Lautsprecherwagen*, as it was called, “opened up the possibility for penetrating public and private spaces with amplified sounds” (Birdsall, 2012, pg. 39). At the same time, the amplification achieved by the vans intensified an ‘acoustic conflict’, which means that Nazis would dominate the city with mediated acoustic technology, overriding the sounds of political opponents. Hitler would use multiple technologies– such as radio, loudspeakers, Lautsprecherwagen – at the same time and constantly. Multiplication and amplification were his principle means for establishing dominance over others and influencing the citizens. The difference between the examples given above and Hitler’s tactics is that he would enforce silence on the citizens, who remained listeners and never broadcasters of their own speeches. The Nazi party had the economic capability to use advanced technology for propaganda. Later on, these technologies became more accessible and used by protesters, anarchists and leftist groups to declare presence and being heard in private and public spaces of the city, resisting the dominant voice of the state.
Suffragette speech-making workshops were a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016), or in other words to amplify their voices in public. In 1912, Sylvia Pankhurst and The East London Federation of Suffragettes would organize these workshops in private spaces, to encourage women to practice speech and feel comfortable with it before they spoke in public. They would read speeches out loud to other women. Like Suffragettes, women, even today, struggle with lack of confidence, when appearing in public. Back then, feminist Margaret Wynne Nevinson, "once wrote she felt a 'dizzy sickness of terror' the first time she stood up to speak publicly" (Cochrane, 2013). Some of them would feel anxious because of male eyes looking at them intensively. This emphasis on speech was an extension of a non-violent political philosophy of early feminism. They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker when entering a dialogue. It is an approach that rejects the abstract and bodiless universal identity of one's person that has been developed by Western thought. By such an identity, I mean that one person is represented as a universal entity that shares the same characteristics and problems with all the people. So, this person can be represented by somebody else by proxy, such as a politician or family member, in a conversation concerning her/his own body. But from a feminist perspective, each individual is unique and carries personal and situated problems and principles, so they are the only one that can represent themselves. Even more, the voice through speech- that can take the form of songs passing from one to the other or the collective voice of protesting- links one another and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres, feminists, like anarchists, look for horizontal ways of communication where no voice dominated over others (Gibbs, 2016). Listening and waiting for everyone to speak, even the most timid, is a basic element of these kind of practices. To be able to listen and include somebody in a conversation requires constant practice. I realized that after starting working with voice and sound. Listening and patiently keeping notes are one of the most important methods in my approach. I listen sounds and voices of the places I am intervening in and I invite other people, mostly those related to that area, to do the same. Right now I am using that method in an area of West Rotterdam, with the intention to create dialogues and explore practices with others. This practice can reveal many unexpected narratives from a place or a person and helps to avoid faulty prejudgements for that person or the area. Then, the ground is ready for a dialogue to begin. The topic of the discussion I want to open is about the exclusion and silencing of female and transcedent voices- I a voices that break gender and social binaries- in public.\
Suffragette speech-making workshops were a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016), or in other words to amplify their voices in public. In 1912, Sylvia Pankhurst and the East London Federation of Suffragettes organized such workshops in private spaces, to encourage women to practice speech and feel comfortable with it before they spoke in public. They would read speeches out loud to other women. Like Suffragettes, women, even today, struggle with lack of confidence, when appearing in public. Back then, feminist Margaret Wynne Nevinson, "once wrote she felt a 'dizzy sickness of terror' the first time she stood up to speak publicly" (Cochrane, 2013). Some of them would feel anxious because of male eyes looking at them intensively. This emphasis on speech was an extension of a non-violent political philosophy of early feminism. They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker when entering a dialogue. It is an approach that rejects the abstract and bodiless universal identity of one's person that has been developed by Western thought. By such an identity, I mean that one person is represented as a universal entity that shares the same characteristics and problems with all the people. So, this person can be represented by somebody else by proxy, such as a politician or family member, in a conversation concerning her/his own body. But from a feminist perspective, each individual is unique and carries personal and situated problems and principles, so they are the only one that can represent themselves. Even more, the voice through speech– that can take the form of songs passing from one to the other or the collective voice of protesting– links one another and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres, feminists, like anarchists, look for horizontal ways of communication where no voice dominated over others (Gibbs, 2016). Listening and waiting for everyone to speak, even the most timid, is a basic element of these kind of practices. To be able to listen and include somebody in a conversation requires constant practice. I realized that after starting to work with voice and sound. Listening and patiently keeping notes are one of the most important methods in my approach. I listen sounds and voices of the places I am intervening in and I invite other people, mostly those related to that area, to do the same. Right now, I am using that method in an area of West Rotterdam, with the intention to create dialogues and explore practices with others. This practice can reveal many unexpected narratives from a place or a person and helps to avoid faulty prejudgements for that person or the area. Then, the ground is ready for a dialogue to begin. The topic of the discussion I want to open is about the exclusion and silencing of female voices – that may transcend and break gender and social binaries – in public.\
In the examples of radio art and pirate radio activism, the temporariness and site-specificity of these actions- of prohibition, sharing of knowledge and communicating through voice- were tangled with the materiality and specificity of the medium. Reni Hofmüller, for example, together with others, made pirate radio in 1990s when the frequency bands were not open for everyone, except the state and companies. She would describe her experience like that:
In the examples of radio art and pirate radio activism, the temporariness and site-specificity of these actions- of prohibition, sharing of knowledge and communicating through voice- were tangled with the materiality and specificity of the medium. Reni Hofmüller, for example, together with others, made pirate radio in 1990s when the frequency bands were not open for everyone, except the state and companies. She describes her experience as follows:
>"We started doing it in the 1990s that the machinery was already quite small. It was simply easier to hide the transmitter, when it has the size of a cigarette pack. The transmitter they used before it was much bigger and it needed more electricity. So, we had this small transmitter, which had five watch power, so it was really weak- it just reach parts of the city of Graz- and then additionally we had a tape walkman to that. You have to think it's the beginning of the 1990s, so there is no mobile computers, accessible to us. (...) We have this small cigarette pack size transmitter more or less. And we have this also very small walkman. Both can function with batteries, because it was also not very long time that we broadcast. And the antenna, it is a Yagi antenna, but it is not the fixed one. (...) its foldable (...) And we would hang it on a tree. We would go to one of the hills outside the city, surrounding the city. And we knew those who control the frequency band. (...) The moment you switch on an additional transmitter they immediately see the pick and in a very short time- and I've seen them once doing it live- it takes them seconds to find out where you are. It is frustrating because 'chack' [sound of fingers] they have you. But then of course to actually catch you they have to physically go where you are. (...) we always broadcast on Sunday noon, 1 pm, so we knew this is when people have this Sunday late breakfast/brunch think and they can listen to us and that it would take the controlling body about 20 minutes to get from the place they are, a tower in the center of town, to the hill we were. So we had 18 minutes of broadcasting time and then we had to pack and disappear. (...) And then you just pack it in a little backpack, because it is so small, you can fold the antenna the two things are really small and you are taking a stroll in a Sunday afternoon" (Hofmüller, 2018).
Since 1920, radio was criticized as a wasteland of commercials and state propaganda. It was Bertolt Brecht (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 87) who perceived it as transceiver to experiment with, and questioning its use, and Walter Benjamin who noticed that it would fail as long as the separation between practitioners and public persisted. From early on, tight regulations restricted the electromagnetic public sphere so that artists didn’t engage deeply with its elements and it was constantly seen as “an unrealized and undertheorized social and aesthetic space” (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 87). Only pirate radio practitioners, with their low-tech practice and self-broadcasting, could interrogate the public, critical and political aspects of radio, as Brecht and Benjamin would imagine. Sarah Kanouse sees the use of prohibited technologies and the confrontation with these restrictions as a political act, one that can propose an “anti-authoritarian radical democracy” (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 89) through the formation of small groups that learn to broadcast and produce alternative media cultures.\
She brings the example of a project, called *Talking Homes* by John Brumit, which was realized under the residency of the Neighborhood Public Radio (little NPR) arts collective of Detroit. The inhabitants broadcast personal stories through transmitters located in their houses and other buildings, revealing the struggle and the daily routine of these people living in degraded neighborhoods. The interviewers were trained by the artist to use their transmitters. It seemed that the exposition of the private sphere, reflected in the localization of the media and the gossip produced, to the public more clearly re-framed clearer the struggle for the neighborhood than big radio networks had. The public engagement, which was not of the typically privileged audience of art spaces, was deep even though the broadcast may have been illegal. The project embodied the spirit of NPR, characterized by the smallness, site-specificity and listener’s participation. Even though these small transmitters don't have many listeners because of their small range, NRC sees that as a way to link people and thus negates the previously mentioned separation of practitioner and public mentioned before. The little NPR, in contrast to National Public Radio (the big NPR), embraces amateurism on the base of its 'polymorphous' structure. In other words, it embraces the instability, diversity, discomforts and the contradictions it produces. Similarly, as a practitioner, I approach neighborhoods and specific places to try actions of listening and participation, as an attempt to eliminate the binary of expert and amateur, artist and audience. Sometimes this approach means that I have to reduce my ambitions and the media used and listen to the choices of the people. In the project I am working right now I build up a set of workshops with others and I gradually introduce more ways of mediation of our voices, as a way to learn our tools and use them as we wish to mediate our messages. \
The second project that Kanouse talks about is *The Public Broadcast Cart* made by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, which is a portable home-made radio, broadcasting the voice of someone driving a cart in several places. The voice of the participant becomes public on site through speakers and extends to radio frequencies and the Internet. The legality of the radio cart doesn’t concern the present, public and this unusual object attracts their attention even more. Based on an open-source, pirate radio spirit, this offering of access to the technology refuses the specialization and the prohibition of the airwaves. The parallel expanses of the voice and the uncensored speech in three different public spaces occupies at the same time the physical, on-line and electromagnetic realm. The DIY electronic media empowers both individual and collective voices.\
During the conflict in Syria, a group of people that wanted to broadcast their own news for the safety of the citizens and the avoidance of more killings, set up a radio station. Its programs would include urgent announcements of battles, strikes, and skirmishes, tutorials for medical care, music and other topical issues. The station, which was called *Radio Fresh*<sup>[1](#myfootnote3)</sup>, ceased to exist in 2016 because of a sudden intervention from Nusra, an extremist Islamist group. While it was on the air the male initiators invited women, who were mainly hidden in their houses, to produce their own programs. Some groups of women decided to first learn vocal techniques. They then broadcasted their own music and speech, but after a while Nusra threatened to close the station if women didn't leave. "Nusra considered their voices shameful, a form of nakedness" (667: Wartime Radio, 2019), similar to the political nakedness that Anne Carson refers to in her text. When Alkaios, an archaic poet, was exiled in the outskirts of the city, he is surrounded by the cries of women- "[n]o proper civic space would contain it unregulated" (Carson, 1996, pg. 125). A man would not make a sound like that and for Alkaios to be exposed to it is a condition of political nakedness. Pythagoras had a similar opinion about his wife's voice; he believed that her speech like her body should not exposed to public, "and she should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she would guard against stripping off her clothes" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129).This appears to be a shameful act, even today, given the example I mentioned before. But, then, doesn't this assumption establish that the female voices lacks political connotation? This kind of male extremist group aspires to preventing women from political expression. After these threats, these women were helped to electronically re-modulate their voices from female to male. They felt weird with this transformation, but everybody was taking their words seriously and after a while they got used to it. It became part of themselves, " it just became normal, and it literally got to the point where I could tell you which girl was which voice" (667: Wartime Radio, 2019)\
Since 1920, radio was criticized as a wasteland of commercials and state propaganda. It was Bertolt Brecht (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 87) who perceived it as a transceiver to experiment with, and questioning its use. Walter Benjamin believed it would fail as long as the separation between practitioners and public persisted. From early on, tight regulations restricted the electromagnetic public sphere so that artists didn’t engage deeply with its elements and it was constantly seen as “an unrealized and undertheorized social and aesthetic space” (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 87). Only pirate radio practitioners, with their low-tech practice and self-broadcasting, could interrogate the public, critical and political aspects of radio, as Brecht and Benjamin had imagined. Sarah Kanouse sees the use of prohibited technologies and the confrontation with these restrictions as a political act, one that can propose an “anti-authoritarian radical democracy” (Kanouse, 2011, pg. 89) through the formation of small groups that learn to broadcast and produce alternative media cultures.\
She brings the example of a project, called *Talking Homes* by John Brumit, which was realized under the residency of the Neighborhood Public Radio (little NPR) arts collective of Detroit. The inhabitants broadcast personal stories through transmitters located in their houses and other buildings, revealing the struggle and the daily routine of these people living in degraded neighborhoods. The interviewers were trained by the artist to use their transmitters. It seemed that the exposition of the private sphere, reflected in the localization of the media and the gossip produced, to the public more clearly re-framed clearer the struggle for the neighborhood than big radio networks had. The public engagement, which was not of the typically privileged audience of art spaces, was deep even though the broadcast may have been illegal. The project embodied the spirit of NPR, characterized by the smallness, site-specificity and listener’s participation. Even though these small transmitters don't have many listeners because of their small range, NRC sees that as a way to link people and thus negates the previously mentioned separation of practitioner and public mentioned before. The little NPR, in contrast to National Public Radio (the big NPR), embraces amateurism on the base of its 'polymorphous' structure. In other words, it embraces the instability, diversity, discomforts and the contradictions it produces. Similarly, as a practitioner, I approach neighborhoods and specific places to try actions of listening and participation, as an attempt to eliminate the binary of expert and amateur, artist and audience. Sometimes this approach means that I have to reduce my ambitions of the media used and listen to the choices of the people. In the project I am working right now I build up a set of workshops with others and I gradually introduce more ways of mediation of our voices. This is a way to learn our tools and use them as we wish to mediate our messages. \
The second project, that Kanouse relates to, is *The Public Broadcast Cart* made by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga. This is a portable home-made radio, broadcasting the voice of someone driving a cart in several places. The voice of the participant becomes public on site through speakers and extends to radio frequencies and the Internet. The legality of the radio cart doesn’t concern the present, public and this unusual object attracts their attention even more. Based on an open-source, pirate radio spirit, this offering of access to the technology refuses the specialization and the prohibition of the airwaves. The parallel expanses of the voice and the uncensored speech in three different public spaces occupies at the same time the physical, on-line and electromagnetic realm. The DIY electronic media empowers both individual and collective voices.\
During the conflict in Syria, a group of people that wanted to broadcast their own news for the safety of the citizens and the avoidance of more killings, set up a radio station. Its programs would include urgent announcements of battles, strikes, and skirmishes, tutorials for medical care, music and other topical issues. The station, which was called *Radio Fresh*<sup>[1](#myfootnote3)</sup>, ceased to exist in 2016 because of a sudden intervention from Nusra, an extremist Islamist group. While it was on the air the male initiators invited women, who were mainly hidden in their houses, to produce their own programs. Some groups of women decided to first learn vocal techniques. They then broadcasted their own music and speech, but after a while Nusra threatened to close the station if women didn't leave. "Nusra considered their voices shameful, a form of nakedness" (667: Wartime Radio, 2019), similar to the political nakedness that Anne Carson refers to in her text. When Alkaios, an archaic poet, was exiled in the outskirts of the city, he is surrounded by the cries of women– "[n]o proper civic space would contain it unregulated" (Carson, 1996, pg. 125). A man would not make a sound like that and for Alkaios to be exposed to it is a condition of political nakedness. Pythagoras had a similar opinion about his wife's voice; he believed that her speech like her body should not exposed to public, "and she should as modestly guard against exposing her voice to outsiders as she would guard against stripping off her clothes" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129).This appears to be a shameful act, even today, given the example I mentioned before. But, then, doesn't this assumption establish that the female voices lacks political connotation? This kind of male extremist group seeks to prevent women from political expression. After these threats, these women were helped to electronically re-modulate their voices from female to male. They felt weird with this transformation, but everybody was taking their words seriously and after a while they got used to it. It became part of themselves, " it just became normal, and it literally got to the point where I could tell you which girl was which voice" (667: Wartime Radio, 2019)\
@ -123,7 +122,7 @@ During the conflict in Syria, a group of people that wanted to broadcast their o
## Conclusion
The mediation of marginalized forms of voicing is happening in conditions that escape the traditional ways of mainstream public platforms, which are dominated by expert males. The collective, or individual concerns of the ones that lack power is spread through different ways of mediation of their voice that bypass these mainstream, dominant modes. In this essay I have separated the examples of amplification and multiplication, but in conclusion these two terms are easily mixed together. All of them have in common the localization, the small scale, the refusal of prohibition and specialization, the participation and presence of people and temporariness. But they also have in common the spirit of oral cultures in the form of a 'second orality', that are based on presence and vocal expression, though they exist in a contemporary Western context that differs from them.
The mediation of marginalized forms of voicing is happening in conditions that escape the traditional ways of mainstream public platforms, which are dominated by expert males. The collective, or individual concerns of those that lack power is spread through different ways of mediation of their voice that bypass these mainstream, dominant modes. In this essay I have separated the examples of amplification and multiplication, but in conclusion these two terms are easily mixed together. All of them have in common the localization, the small scale, the refusal of prohibition and specialization, the participation and presence of people and temporariness. But they also have in common the spirit of oral cultures in the form of a 'second orality', that are based on presence and vocal expression, though they exist in a contemporary Western context that differs from them.
\pagebreak
# 3. Transmitting Ugly Things
@ -131,7 +130,7 @@ The mediation of marginalized forms of voicing is happening in conditions that e
## What ugly things, and the medium
Marginalized people vocalize things that are unacceptable for the society, unspeakable, politically incorrect, emotionally overwhelming, disorderly. They are too personal, too emotional, too embodied. In *The Gender of Sound*, Anne Carson explains how the direct mode of address of women's voices has been an annoyance for patriarchal society since the time of Ancient Greece. A woman would expose her inside truths that were supposed to be kept private. For example, emotions that reveal pleasure or pain either from sexual encounters, or the birth of a child. "By projections and leakages of all kinds- somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual- females expose or expend what should be kept in" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129); this reveals society's fear of death, blood, darkness, birth, the female body. This direct continuity and linkage between the inside and outside has been a threat for human nature and society as it is not filtered through the rational tool of human communication, 'speech'. It has been established that our inner desires and needs have to be expressed indirectly through speech, and in the case of women, through their men’s speech or as Eliana Kanaveli says, "the interests of women are represented by men and are a partial expression of patriarchy" (Kanaveli, 2012). Through speech and language people can construct their identities and claim their own presence and voice in public. There is a connection of sound and voice with externalizing our inside subjectivities, that remain hidden. One of the principal characteristics of sound is its unique relationship to interiority. According to Walter Ong (2002, pg. 69) "[t]his relationship is important because of the interiority of human consciousness and of human communication itself". Human consciousness is internalized and inaccessible to outside people. Hearing a sound or voice can expose inside structures of something or somebody without violating it. Sound, in contrast to vision, comes from any direction to the human ear and in primary oral culture was affecting deeply the way humans perceived their own existence and presence. Thus, the voice mediated trough the body transfers the inside resonance, that is connected to consciousness and physical elements, to the outside, contributing to human communication. \
One perceived 'ugly' form of address in Ancient Greece was an utterance, a high-pitched cry, called ‘ololyga’ which was a female ritual practice. This is still practiced in Greece and the Middle East, and it is related to mourning. In their rituals women would also say offensive things in the context of 'aischrologia'; a process whereby woman, acting as proxy, would freely discharge unspeakable things on behalf of the city. A more recent form of monstrous articulation is 'hysteria', as theorized by Freud, which connects the psychical events within a woman's body directly to the outside, her exterior behavior. The word of this disease connects to the inside of the female body as it "derives from 'hystera', Greek for uterus, and ancient doctors attributed a number of female maladies to a starved or misplaced womb"(Kinetz, 2006). The illness was based on sexual deprivation, because feminine sexual pleasure was considered taboo. Freud, in difference with other psychologists, theorized it as a way the interior (unconscious) conflict would manifest in the outside world into physical symptoms, so hysterical actions were mediations. It seems that the feminine consciousness through these processes was accused as something evil and its communication to the outside was happening through abnormal, exaggerating physical symptoms. Females are often associated with sins and evil within the collective memory. For example, gossip is a form of address that reveals secrets that should stay hidden. It is an alternative form of communication which operates in the private domain and has been created in response to the exclusion of speech in public. Gossip "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). But even in Ancient Greece this form was undesirable; Plutarch (Carson, 1996, pg. 130) tells a story of how a secret is spread fast by women creating chaos and ruin, in contrast to men who refrain from revealing it. In contrast to this, the rational expression of speech is about restriction and self-control. In *Odussey* authoritative public speech is "not the kind of chatting, prattling or gossip that anyone – women included, or especially women – could do" (Beard, 2017).\
Other ugly things are the private and hidden events of family violence. For feminists in the early 20th century, public speech, in a group of other women sharing the same problem, was a way to externalize the personal violence and suppression of women, without using violence in response. Protesters, respectively, protest in plural voices against the abuses of power by their government either by demonstrating or occupying public spaces, such as the recent Occupy Movement and Arab Spring. All these examples do not follow the rationalist approach of the context they are part of. They mobilize passion, dispair, vulnerabilities and unfulfilled desires with their voices and presence. The recent public expressions of ourage in Europe have been criticized by elit figures as immature, too emotional and non-political, while they should be rational and technocratic actions. Passion- associated with irrational sentimental femininity, uncivilized primitiveness, and an inarticulate working class- is being politically devaluated on the base of normalizing the shift from political to juridical reason(Butler and Athanasiou, 2013, pg. 177). The idea that democracy is a civilized way of making decisions that doesn't accept any form of over-emotion or overflow of expression, is nothing more than an illusion that actually threatens the existence of democracy by creating exclusion and disregarding the importance of passions and desires in politics. As Chantal Mouffe says, "[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics" (Mouffe, 2000b, pg. 146). Thus, democratic processes should take into consideration any irrational fantasies and desires that the public express. Their suppression may lead to repressed pain, fanaticism and totalitarianism, as there is no space for them to exist. The rationalist mind is connected to the contemporary literate and civilized individual, who has rejected the wild primitive subjectivity, as it belongs to the past. But, this Darwinian ideology of linear evolution rejects present abnormal- that cannot adjust in the current regime- behaviors, which may express minorities and propose new democratic practices. A strong critical relation with the past is needed, and even more, to embrace elements from previous and other more 'primitive' cultures in a non-linear way.
Other ugly things are the private and hidden events of family violence. For feminists in the early 20th century, public speech, in a group of other women sharing the same problem, was a way to externalize the personal violence and suppression of women, without using violence in response. Protesters, respectively, protest in plural voices against the abuses of power by their government either by demonstrating or occupying public spaces, such as the recent Occupy Movement and Arab Spring. All these examples do not follow the rationalist approach of the context they are part of. They mobilize passion, dispair, vulnerabilities and unfulfilled desires with their voices and presence. The recent public expressions of ourage in Europe have been criticized by elite figures as immature, too emotional and non-political, while they should be rational and technocratic actions. Passion- associated with irrational sentimental femininity, uncivilized primitiveness, and an inarticulate working class- is being politically devaluated on the base of normalizing the shift from political to juridical reason(Butler and Athanasiou, 2013, pg. 177). The idea that democracy is a civilized way of making decisions that doesn't accept any form of over-emotion or overflow of expression, is nothing more than an illusion that actually threatens the existence of democracy by creating exclusion and disregarding the importance of passions and desires in politics. As Chantal Mouffe says, "[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics" (Mouffe, 2000b, pg. 146). Thus, democratic processes should take into consideration any irrational fantasies and desires that the public express. Their suppression may lead to repressed pain, fanaticism and totalitarianism, as there is no space for them to exist. The rationalist mind is connected to the contemporary literate and civilized individual, who has rejected the wild primitive subjectivity, as it belongs to the past. But, this Darwinian ideology of linear evolution rejects present abnormal- that cannot adjust in the current regime- behaviors, which may express minorities and propose new democratic practices. A strong critical relation with the past is needed, and even more, to embrace elements from previous and other more 'primitive' cultures in a non-linear way.
## Streaming media in relation to female continuity
In ancient medical and anatomical theory women had two mouths, the upper and the lower, connected through the neck. The lips of both these mouths guarded a 'hollow cavity' and they had to remain closed. Having two mouths that speak simultaneously is confusing and embarrassing, and this creates ‘kakophony’. Females were expressing something directly when it should have been said indirectly. Traditionally, this direct continuity between the inside and the outside is repulsive to the male nature, which aspires for self-control, interrupting this continuity and dissociating the inside from the outside (Carson, 1996, pg. 131). Women 'transmit' unfiltered information. At this point I would like to draw a fantastic parallel with streaming media, which has been used as a tool of direct and urgent communication by protesters, as in the case of the Occupy Movement. Similarly with the continuity I described before, streaming protocols and processes deliver unedited live messages that sometimes disagree with the mainstream. At Occupy Wall Street, for example, streaming media, like Livestream, Ustream and Youtube, was a way for protesters to be immediately heard in public and to broadcast their own news online. Thus, experts or official media platforms were unable to filter their speech or alter messages before they were spread online. The companies providing online streaming didn't agree with the actions and messages of #occupy and thus they would publicly disassociate themselves from them. "Both Livestream and Ustream officials say they simply operate platforms and are not supporting the movements(...)[they] removed advertising from the Occupy channels after some brands complained that they did not want their ads appearing next to streaming video of protesters"(Preston, 2011). Similarly, radio streaming has been a way for activists, protesters and citizens to share their own news and program. In times of war, citizens set up their own radio stations, that proposes alternative source of news and can't be censored by the government- radio technology can escape mainstream platforms, such as Internet, and thus avoid part of surveillance from top. In Syria for example, during war, activists built a radio station, called Radio Fresh, which, besides other things, was announcing strikes and battles for the safety of citizens (667: Wartime Radio, 2019). I will elaborate on the example in *Multiplication Vis a Vis Amplification*. This unaltered and direct speech of (radio/streaming) broadcasting has similarities with the uncontrolled direct expression of the female bodies in public (like 'hysteria', 'aischrologia', 'ololyga'). There is a fear of continuity related to the message that comes out, unedited, from the inside of the human 'container' and its channels. This continuity seems to me to be like an 'embodied streaming' that relates the medium with the human body, based on the need for a message to be articulated and distributed to others. Live streaming provides the opportunity for a body to be present somewhere else, with a slight delay, through the voice or a video representation.
@ -172,6 +171,7 @@ Looking back in time, ancient thinking about on the female voices- as an 'ugly'
- Birdsall, C. (2012) Nazi Soundscapes: Sound, Technology and Urban Space in Germany, 1933-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Butler, J. and Athanasiou, A. (2013) Dispossession: The Performative in the Political. 1 edition. Malden, MA: Polity.
- Carson, A. (1996) ‘The Gender of Sound’, in Glass, Irony and God. First Edition edition. New York: New Directions, pp. 119–142.
- Moraine, S. (2011) ‘“Mic check!”: #occupy, technology & the amplified voice’, The Society Pages, 6 October. Available at: https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/10/06/mic-check-occupy-technology-the-amplified-voice/ (Accessed: 6 December 2018).
- Mouffe, C. (2000)
-‘For an Agonistic Model of Democracy’, in The Democratic Paradox. London; New York: Verso, pp. 80–107.
-‘Politics and Passions: the Stakes of Democracy’, Ethical Perspectives, 7(2–3), pp. 146–150.
