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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 ongoing concern lies on the presence of the marginalized female voice in public. During my previous studies I gradually realized how my gendered body had been silenced or marginalized since my early childhood through slight gestures from male figures or institutional powers that were obfuscating the situation. Observing, as well, female members of my family, female teachers, workers and immigrant neighbors of my early age environment I found out different types of marginalization and silencing. Examples would be women working at home or the background of a company, taking care of everything in the family and leaving behind their own desires, men interrupting them when articulating arguments in a political/formal dialogue, underestimating their knowledge. The mediation of their voices and the way they were becoming present, active participants and visible in public spaces and spheres became one of my main interests. My past projects reflected and responded to that concern. I worked with voice and sound that as forms of art are underestimated in the context of the western visual culture. They are forms connected to irrational attitudes and oral non western cultures[?]. Feminists include and embrace voice in their practices because there is a uniqueness in it that embodies the speakers and their personal stories.
The sound of voices reveals hidden suppressed 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 I met 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 of the same place, when they were physically present. At another time only their words were present and 'participated' in conversations in the square. From my description of 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. ). The women were represented by mediated distant voices. My ongoing research after that 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 presence and inhabiting space. Historically, some 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 has played an important role in that. The collective voice represents the marginalized voice of a patriarchal society. The female voice is part of it. The texts deal particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices (see the monstrosity...). 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” and thus to exclude (see Let’s talk about unspeakable things).
Research question: How voice occupies space and reveals dark aspects that can be anything else than harmful for the establishment of a democratic society.