5.2 KiB
Title
- Voluminous bodies
- The volume of female voices
- Knowing and inhabiting with your voice
- Amplifying a collective female voice
- The sounds of
Introduction
The last years my continuous concern lies on the presence of the marginalized female voice in public. During my previous studies I gradually realized how my gendered body has been silenced or marginalized since my early childhood through slight gestures from male figures or institutional powers that was obfuscating the situation. Observing/rethinking female members of my family, as well, female teachers, workers and immigrants of my early environment I found out different types of marginalization and silencing. Examples with it women working at home or the background of a company, interrupting them when articulating arguments in a political dialogue, underestimate her knowledge, taking care of everything aside to their own life, gossiping. I had also dealt with several experiences when in public space[more specific examples to voice]. The mediation of their voices and the way they were becoming present/visible, participants and visible in public space were interested me in my recent projects. My past projects reflect and respond to that concern. Sound as a form of art is put aside and its not so strong for a visual society. But artists that work on these topics have appropriated it. Oral history has also concerned feminists and other un-patriarchical structures. Its invisibility had metaphorically connected with them. The sound of voices reveals hidden supressed aspects and subjects of the society. The sound has to do invisibility, telepresence and marginal [text about proposal at Belfast]. In my project Sound Acts in Victoria Square I inserted the recorded sounds of women’s voices into existing conversations at a public square in Athens that was male dominated. First, I realized and recorded actions of conversations, within two months, with women in the square, as well as archived and ordered the collected material. Then I planned and realized the in-situ broadcasting of the collected sound material and the direction of the new relations and conversations with the public for one day in June 2015. Their voices came from a past time at the same place, when they were present physically. At another time only their words are present in the place and 'participate' in conversations in the square. From my text describing the project: "The broadcasted female voices were abruptly intervening into the existing conversations in the specific places, giving the impression of an non-invited 'absent' guest" (Diakrousi, 2015, pg. ) or I would say a mediated distant voice. Intersectionality and feminism proposed an interesting approach to work with. Practices of feminists appropriated and embraced the voice as an embodied act...Horizontal dialogue, listening practices, presence, voice... My ongoing research lead me to the public forums and public speeches and the technologies that facilitate them.
This thesis is a series of 5 essays which relate to the female and collective voice and its mediation. They address the voice as a feminist tool for communicating and an object of inhabiting space and presence. The texts deal particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices (see The roots of collective voice). Historically, some voices and modes of addressing have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain (see the monstrosity of female voice). The separation between private and public space plays an important role. The collective voice represents the marginalized voice of a patriarchal society. The female voice is part of it. This collective vocalization affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices (see Multiplication vis a vis amplification) that refuses the dominant ways of establishing presence and dialogue. In the patriarchal democracy there is a fear of ugly forms of address which are connected to the female body _ blood, birth, death, mourning &c_ and other dark aspects and passions that are perceived as threat for the society. These are forms of vocalization that are excluded public discourse which centers on “self-control” and “reason”. Such things are creating 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 that (see transmitting ugly things). There are technologies for self-control and filtration. The men are taught to disport themselves in particular ways and they are taught to teach the women to be silent. In the current era we see how technologies serve to filter forms of collective voices; again this aims to reduce “noise” (see Let’s talk about unspeakable things).
Research question:
This thesis comprises series of small 6 essays that will be reconfigured in the thesis : “ the monstrosity…”. All these essays have in common the separation between private and public; gender separation; the individual and collective insofar as they relate to the voice and how the voice is mediated from the past times to today
My thesis is about a timeline from ancient Greece to today. How the ancient structure of the terms of public and private separation....