diff --git a/presentations/presentation201904.md b/presentations/presentation201904.md index c0f8c66..c27f953 100644 --- a/presentations/presentation201904.md +++ b/presentations/presentation201904.md @@ -4,4 +4,5 @@ I borrow practices from the examples I explore, that also follow my methods. Sit ## Intention I want to make space for these things to unravel -Possibilities of amplification (through distortions, creating spaces, listening, streaming, amplifying? practices explored in my thesis) Draw parallels with the examples mentioned in the thesis and my work right now \ No newline at end of file +Possibilities of amplification (through distortions, creating spaces, listening, streaming, amplifying? practices explored in my thesis) Draw parallels with the examples mentioned in the thesis and my work right now +“What kinds of collective practices do voices – especially women speaking aloud – make possible?’ directly to your own current or planned work? diff --git a/thesis/thesis-angeliki.md b/thesis/thesis-angeliki.md index 2b34883..910b7ea 100644 --- a/thesis/thesis-angeliki.md +++ b/thesis/thesis-angeliki.md @@ -17,7 +17,16 @@ weight: 10 --- # Introduction -Even though voice is a medium for collective practice, as Walter Ong argues in his book *Orality and Literacy*, it is situated in a context that tends towards social binary structures and oppositions, that restrict its possibilities. Nevertheless the nature of voice and its capablities overpass these boundaries beyond gender, spatial, power, technological binaries. This research seeks to unravel these possibilities of voice, with the intention to explore democratic ways of communication that embraces excluded forms of address. My ongoing research lead me to the public forums, speech, and the technologies that facilitate them, from a feminist perspective. This thesis is a series of three essays which relate to the female voices, collective voices and their mediation. They address the voice as a feminist tool for communicating, and an object of presence and inhabiting space. Historically, some modes of address have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain. The separation between private and public space has played an important role as it is related to gender separation. The collective voice is marginalized under the realm of the patriarchal individualistic society. The female voices is part of it. The texts deal particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices. I will investigate this in further detail in *The Monstrosity of the female voices*. This collective vocalization affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices that refuses dominant ways of establishing presence and dialogue. Its mediation takes advantage of the technologies that emerge with an agonistic attitude, and resembles 'second orality'- a concept that Walter Ong has developed. I will investigate this in further detail in *Multiplication vis a vis Amplification*. In our democracy there is a fear of 'ugly' modes of address which are connected to the female body- blood, birth, death, mourning- and other dark aspects and passions that are perceived as threatening to society. These forms of vocalization are excluded from a public discourse which since antiquity have centered on “self-control” and “reason”. Such things are seen to create noise and disorder and "have to be kept" silent according to the patriarchal norms. But alternative mediums and forms of communication have been developed against this. I will investigate this in further detail in *Transmitting Ugly Things*.\ +Even though voice is a medium for collective practice, as Walter Ong argues in his book *Orality and Literacy*, it is situated in a context that tends towards social binary structures and oppositions, that restrict its possibilities. These binaries have structured Western thinking since antiquity and favors a 'civilized white patriarchal' democracy. Nevertheless the nature of voice and its capablities overpass these oppositions of gender, nationality, culture, space, technology and power relations. This research seeks to unravel these possibilities of voice, with the intention to explore democratic ways of communication that embraces excluded forms of address. It deals with the dichotomies of male/female, public/private, expert/amateur, rational/ irational, ordered/wild. + +My ongoing research lead me to the public forums, speech, and the technologies that facilitate them, from a feminist perspective. + +*So: what kinds of collective practice do voices make possible? How do they do this (by making space, creating the circumstances for forms of listening)? How has and does technology (mediation, amplification, streaming) expand those possibilities? And – crucially – how has gender limited and expanded those possibilities?* + +Anne Carson's text *The Gender of Sound* in my thesis + + +This thesis is a series of three essays which relate to the female voices, collective voices and their mediation. They address the voice as a feminist tool for communicating, and an object of presence and inhabiting space. Historically, some modes of address have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain. The separation between private and public space has played an important role as it is related to gender separation. The collective voice is marginalized under the realm of the patriarchal individualistic society. The female voices is part of it. The texts deal particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices. I will investigate this in further detail in *The Monstrosity of the female voices*. This collective vocalization affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices that refuses dominant ways of establishing presence and dialogue. Its mediation takes advantage of the technologies that emerge with an agonistic attitude, and resembles 'second orality'- a concept that Walter Ong has developed. I will investigate this in further detail in *Multiplication vis a vis Amplification*. In our democracy there is a fear of 'ugly' modes of address which are connected to the female body- blood, birth, death, mourning- and other dark aspects and passions that are perceived as threatening to society. These forms of vocalization are excluded from a public discourse which since antiquity have centered on “self-control” and “reason”. Such things are seen to create noise and disorder and "have to be kept" silent according to the patriarchal norms. But alternative mediums and forms of communication have been developed against this. I will investigate this in further detail in *Transmitting Ugly Things*.\ In recent years my concern has been with the presence of the female voices in public. During my previous studies I came to realize how my gendered body had been silenced or marginalized through slight gestures from male figures or institutional powers. By also observing women in their roles as members of my family, teachers, workers and immigrant neighbors of my youth, I discovered different types of marginalization and silencing. Examples would be women working at home, taking care of everything in the family and neglecting their own desires and interests, men interrupting them when articulating arguments in a political or formal dialogue and routinely underestimating their knowledge. The mediation of their voices and the way they became present, active participants and visible in public spaces and spheres became one of my principle interests. My past artistic projects reflected and responded to that concern while I worked with voice and sound which, as forms of art, are underestimated in the context of Western visual culture. As this text will outline, they are forms connected to irrational attitudes and oral cultures. The sound of voices reveals hidden suppressed aspects and subjectivities. Because of its temporariness, non-linearity, invisibility and border-less character sound can exist and travel within multiple dimensions of spaces simultaneously, creating bonds between them. Throughout history, oral cultures, by being based on vocal expression, differ from more recently established literate cultures in that they embrace the collective sharing of knowledge. More specifically they create "personality structures that in certain ways are more communal and externalized, and less introspective than those common among literates" (Ong, 2002, pg. 67). In recent times, feminists have included and embraced voice in their practices because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speakers and their personal stories, while connecting the present listeners. Together with these concerns, about the exclusion of women’s voices, I also experienced a gender-based differentiation between amateur and expert knowledge, particularly when approaching telecommunication networks and technologies, with the intention of learning to build and use them for my artistch practice. This division of labor goes together with the gender exclusion. I quickly found out that I was not alone in this regard. The volunteers of an activist collective, Prometheus, expressed similar concerns in the construction of a radio station: >"The radio activists presented the work of soldering a transmitter, tuning an antenna, and producing a news program or governing a radio station to be accessible to all. Nevertheless, they were conscious of patterned gaps in their organization and volunteer base: men were more likely than women to know how to build electronics, to be excited by tinkering, and to have the know-how to teach neophytes.This troubled the activists"(Dunbar-Hester, pg. 53-54). @@ -28,7 +37,7 @@ In one of my projects, *Sound Acts in Victoria Square* I 'inserted' the recorded # 1. The Monstrosity of the female voices ## What modes: the annoying noise -Here I list, from the text of Anne Carson *The Gender of Sound*, how, since ancient times the female voices has been described; +Here I list, from the text of Anne Carson, *The Gender of Sound*, how, since ancient times, the female voices have been described; >high-pitched, loud shouting, having too much smile in it, decapitated hen, heartchilling groan, garg, horrendous, howling dogs, being tortured in hell, deadly, incredible babbling, fearsome hullabaloo, she shrieks obscenities, haunting garrulity, monstrous, prodigious noise level, otherwordly echo, making such a racket, a loud roaring noise, disorderly and uncontrolled outflow of sound, shrieking, wailing, sobbing, shrill lament, loud laughter, screams of pain or of pleasure, eruptions of raw emotion, groan, barbarous excesses, female outpourings, bad sound, craziness, non-rational, weeping, emotional display, oral disorder, disturbing, abnormal, "hysteria", "Not public property", exposing her inside facts, private data, permits direct continuity between inside and outside, female ejaculation, "saying ugly things", objectionable, pollution, remarkable @@ -40,22 +49,22 @@ Today women in public life worry if their voices are too light or high to comman The mechanisms of marginalization of these specific modes of address are based on control and filtering. One example is the repetitive action of self-control that comes from the ancient tactic of controlling emotional exposure of one's own. Carson (1996, pg. 126) says that patriarchal thinking on emotional and ethical matters is related to ‘sophrosyne’, or self- control of the body. A man is feminized when he lets his emotions come out, and so he has to control his body, and subsequently himself. "Females blurt out a direct translation of what should be formulated indirectly" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129). It was believed that the masculine deep voice, by default, indicates self- control. So, the doctors of archaic periods would suggest exercises of oration to men to cure the damage inflicted by repeated use of a loud, high-pitched voice. This means that they would practice public speech so to learn how to filter their inner emotions when they were externalized. In addition to that, so as to be taken seriously, a low-pitched voice would be appropriate to use in public assemblies.\ The female version of this practice was perceived more as a way for men to silence women when they were loud or screamed from pain or pleasure. Because they weren't able to control themselves by nature, this inability was related to animal and 'primitive' human behaviors. Silencing women, the female ‘sophrosyne’, had been an object of legislative arrangements in the ancient world. Women didn’t have the license to express their ‘noise’ in specific places or events, and there was also a restriction on the duration, the content and the choreography of their rituals in funerals so that they wouldn’t create chaos and delirium. Silencing, today, has also to do with the interruption of women's voice when they express an argument in a dialogue. There was a way to cure the women and city from the chaos. Normally, these unpleasant female tendencies remained hidden from the men’s view because they were deemed annoying, non-human and disorderly. But in Dionysian festivals the task of one selected woman would be to discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city, in a practice which was called ‘aischrologia’, that lead to ‘katharsis’, which means the purification of the soul. She was free to express all these weird noises but only then and for the benefit of society. ‘Aischrologia’ seems similar to the therapeutic practice of hypnosis on hysterical women by Freud, who aspired to resurrect this ancient idea. Their emotions, and unspeakable things, were polluting them inside, and employing a ‘talking cure’ or in other words, ‘katharsis’ would help them. Freud's 'talking cure' was concerned with channeling these negative emotions through politically appropriated containers, through 'speech'(Carson, 1996, pg. 132-133). -### Shut out of the public: Separation of public and private space -Ancient Greek thinkers had set the gender binary and its reflection in space. According to Kevin Fox Gotham (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012), territorial restrictions, identities and meanings are negotiable, as they are defined through social interaction and controversy. Thus, space is the material of human action and the outcome of social interactions. Western philosophical thought, based on ancient social structures, supports the division between the private and public domains. In public space everybody should be civilized and resolve conflicts through dialogue, but the interior of private spaces is ruled by a domestic power where violence is permitted. This separation has reached a point where men are the main political operators in public space. But the division is also between politicians and citizens, natives and immigrants, and experts and amateurs in rhetoric. Representations of gender and space are not immutable, but they consolidate dominant realities because of their repetition. Outside public spaces have historically been the main arena for male-gendered subjects. Public spaces reflect gender constructions that privatize men, and female subjects are expressing their needs and desires through male figures. The social life of the latter is restricted by the 'housewifization' and the private abode of the house.\ -The dominant notion that men are the main operators within the public sphere, together with the idea that women are vulnerable and weak, leads to the normalization of fear of women in outside spaces. The idea that women are excluded from public space because of male violence doesn't mean that men directly exclude women. There are complicated power relations that create this exclusion. Freedom of speech relates to political participation, and in theory everyone can have it, but in practice unwritten rules and power relations define what is going to be said, and to whom. The factor of fear intervenes in this. These rules construct the public sphere and restrict female subjects in expressing harmless thoughts. The voices and speeches of women in public are directed to 'non-listening ears' and they remain silent. In Radio Fresh in Syria, an example that will be mentioned in the next chapter, when women started to broadcast and host their own radio programs, an extremist group stopped them from keep speaking on air. They refused to listen to whatever they want to say, because they are women. They perceive female voices in public as a form of 'nakedness'. However, when women transformed technically their voices to male- technicians helped them to change electronically the quality of their voice as they speak in the microphone- everybody would listen carefully to their words. +### Shut out of the public: Opposition of public and private space +Ancient Greek thinkers had set the gender binary and its reflection in space. According to Kevin Fox Gotham (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012), territorial restrictions, identities and meanings are negotiable, as they are defined through social interaction and controversy. Thus, space is the material of human action and the outcome of social interactions. Western philosophical thought, based on ancient social structures, supports the division between the private and public domains. In public space everybody should be civilized and resolve conflicts through dialogue, but the interior of private spaces is ruled by a domestic power where violence is permitted. This separation has reached a point where men are the main political operators in public space. But the division is also between politicians and citizens, natives and immigrants, and experts and amateurs in rhetoric. Representations of gender and space are not immutable, but they consolidate dominant realities because of their repetition. Outside public spaces have historically been the main arena for male-gendered subjects. Public spaces reflect gender constructions that privatize men, and female subjects are expressing their needs and desires through male figures. The social life of the latter is restricted by the 'housewifization' and the private abode of the house. Dichotomy of public and private...\ +The dominant notion that men are the main operators within the public sphere, together with the idea that women are vulnerable and weak, leads to the normalization of fear of women in outside spaces. The idea that women are excluded from public space because of male violence doesn't mean that men directly exclude women. There are complicated power relations that create this exclusion. Freedom of speech relates to political participation, and in theory everyone can have it, but in practice unwritten rules and power relations define what is going to be said, and to whom. The factor of fear intervenes in this. These rules construct the public sphere and restrict female subjects in expressing harmless thoughts. The voices and speeches of women in public are directed to 'non-listening ears' and they remain silent. In Radio Fresh in Syria, an example that will be mentioned in the next chapter, when women started to broadcast and host their own radio programs, an extremist group stopped them from keep speaking on air. They refused to listen to whatever they want to say, because they are women. They perceive female voices in public as a form of 'nakedness'. However, when women transformed technically their voices to male- technicians helped them to change electronically the quality of their voice as they speak in the microphone- everybody would listen carefully to their words. For the purpose of making their own radio programme and include their voices in airwaves they changed their gender of their voice. Their female body accepts a distorion in male. *Being somehow both interior and exterior, of a body and not of a body? Live, embodied and (always potentially) mediated, disembodied?* ## The Roots of Collective Voice The voice is a medium for collective practice. According to Walter Ong (2002, pg. 67), "[o]ral communication unites people in groups. Writing and reading [of literate cultures] are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself". Orality, or thought and verbal expression which is not based on writing and reading skills, has still a presence in contemporary Western cultures. It has been transformed into a new orality that "has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment (...) But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality" (Ong. pg.13). However, the rational individualistic democracy stands against this collective vocalization that includes the sounds of all the other species and marginalized genders. But mainly it is a reminder of a primitive human mode of address that creates alienation and feelings of fear of looking back. ## Conclusion -The association of the female voices with bestiality and disorder justifies the tactic of patriarchal culture to ‘put a lid’ on the female mouth since ancient times. Different mechanisms have been developed to exclude specific forms of address from the public which are based on complicated power relations in society. Collective and female vocalizations are perceived as threats to society and thus they are undergoing filtration and 'normalization'- in a way of silencing and self-control. They get regulated and rational, with restricting included passions and desires. +The association of the female voices with bestiality and disorder justifies the tactic of patriarchal culture to ‘put a lid’ on the female mouth since ancient times. Different mechanisms have been developed to exclude specific forms of address from the public which are based on complicated power relations in society. Collective and female vocalizations are perceived as threats to society and thus they are undergoing filtration and 'normalization'- in a way of silencing and self-control. They get regulated and rational, with restricting included passions and desires. From my percpective the female utterance was embracing the primitive and irational human nature, but articulating their own form of speech- although it was a tool of the rational contemporary man- and challenging the dichtotomy between the past and present. \pagebreak # 2. Multiplication Vis a Vis Amplification Ong mentions that “[a]t the same time, with telephone, radio, television and various kinds of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of 'secondary orality'” (Ong, 2002, pg. 13). 'Second orality' includes elements from oral cultures, but with the use of the high technology of media and exists in the literate cultures. In this new orality, the use of media has affected the performance of speech and verbal communication. One of its main characteristics is the telepresence of the speaker. Television, for example, allowed politicians to speak, from one place, to a larger audience, which is spread around the world. The technologies of amplification devices, that relate the embodied and the distant voice, enhance the presence of the person carrying it. They give the ability to be here now and at the same time elsewhere. The mediating role of all kinds of media that detach the voice from its physical proprietor, enables "its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access" (Panopoulos, no date) and enables others to listen to that speaker even if they are not sharing the same space. The medium still creates bonds between them, and channels for sharing knowledge, it always relates us to the absent other through the sense of listening. ## The mediation of voice through multiplication -Urban space hosts several 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 of knowledge through verbal communication. Today the agonistic dynamics of primitive oral thought, which have affected 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). 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 requests, warnings, invitations, promises, apologies, predictions, and it is 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 [1](#myfootnote1) 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.\ +Urban space hosts several 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 of knowledge through verbal communication. Today the agonistic dynamics of primitive oral thought, which have affected 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). 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 requests, warnings, invitations, promises, apologies, predictions, and it is 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 [1](#myfootnote1) 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,tempora I again create temporary spaces/platforms that occupy a proexisted public space for a while, like Leeszaal, through small moments pf this public space...\ 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, 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 [1](#myfootnote2). 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 [more]. 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) @@ -69,7 +78,7 @@ At some occasions, the amplification of the voice, as a mode of prohibition and ![](mikrofoniki.jpg){ width=50% } -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, looked 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 is one of the most important methods in my approach. I listen sounds and voices of the places I am intervening in and I ask/invite other people, mostly people related to that area, to listen carefully as well, before judging or making a statement. This practice can reveal/unfold many unexpected narratives from a place or a person and helps me to be patient when approaching an area, avoiding to put my own stamp.\ +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 tocreate dialogues and practice with others. This practice can reveal many unexpected narratives from a place or a person and helps to avoid misjudgments/misconceptions and faulty prejudgement for that person or the area or a concept/contruct. Then, the ground is ready for a dialogue to begin. The topic that I would like to open this discussion is about the exclusion/silencing of female voices in public and where this structures of public speech appear in the city...\ ![](feminists.JPG){ width=50% } @@ -79,7 +88,7 @@ In the examples of radio art and pirate radio activism, the temporariness and si >"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. There is no Internet, in the sense of how we use it now. (...) 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. You know you have the official administration for defining who is actually aloud to broadcast and then you have different bodies of administration that actually control what is happening in the frequency band and we knew where they are and that they are constantly scanning what is happening in the 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. An unlicensed broadcast can challenge what public art wants to; the creation of a public sphere willing to interrogate the “democracy” of which public space is a part of.\ -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. It is very often that in my practice I approach neighborhoods and specific places to try actions of listening and... This is a way to eliminate the binary of expert and amateur, artist and audience. Some times this approach means that I have to reduce my ambitions and the media used because it gets very complicated. But I build up something with the people there that gradually reach to the point I can introduce more mediations and .... \ +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... as an attempt to eliminate the binary of expert and amateur, artist and audience. Some times this approach means that I have to reduce my ambitions and the media used because it gets very complicated/that applies to the needs or choices of the people. In the project I wam working right now I relate/build up with the people there that gradually reach to the point I can introduce more mediations and .... as a way tp learn our tools and use them as wished 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* [1](#myfootnote3), 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)\