Stand in front of a mirror and repeat “why am I, I?” one hundred times.

This talk will consider the notion of sonic possible worlds in relation to the body. I will discuss the body as material and fleshly body, as human and more than human form, whose sonic possibilities ruptures norms and expectations through invisible permutations, silences and screams. Thus, I will sound and articulate a body in trans-formation, ephemeral and porous; questioning of individuation and the boundary of the skin. And hope to hear the unrecognizable body, at the margins of the representational frame and at the brink of viability, to engage in how its sonic possibility challenges who we count as real, and how we hear their actuality: the norms and naturalizations that give us the recognizable body and its name.

Making connections between the work of, among others Hannah Silva, Jocy de Oliveira, Shilpa Gupta and Pamela Z, and the writings of Margrit Shildrick, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz and Rosi Braidotti, et al., we hear the promises of monsters, the dreams of cyborgs, the ambiguity of freaks, and reach the posthuman, and come to speculate on a vampiric invisibility that is the body’s material-self in its sonic shape, and in its being as being with every other thing, human and more than human in concatenation.

Not only did bodies indicate a world beyond themselves, but this movement beyond their own boundaries, a movement of boundary itself, appeared to be quite central to what bodies ‘are’.”

(Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, On the Discursive Limits of Sex, New York and London: Routledge, 1993, p. ix.)

Moderator: Jan Thoben

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer engaged in listening as a socio-political practice. She writes essays, books and text-scores for performance and publication. Most recently her book Sonic Possible Worlds 2014/21 appeared in a revised second edition, extending the discussion on the sonic possibility of the world to rethink normative constructions and fabulate a different body from its sound. Voegelin’s practice engages in participatory, collective and communal approaches and uncurates curatorial conventions through performance. She co-convenes, with Mark Peter Wright, the cross-disciplinary listening and sound making event Points of Listening https://pointsoflistening.net, and uncurates curatorial conventions to re-know the world from the connecting logic of sound.

Voegelin is a Professor of Sound at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, and currently represents the Professorship Klangkunst in den Kunstwissenschaften at the University of Art Braunschweig. www.salomevoegelin.net  @soundwords_sv

In the winter semester 2021/22, Sound Studies and Sonic Arts presents a lecture series exploring sound in artistic research. The genome of the master program implies an understanding that theory and practice mutually inform each other and represent two sides of the same coin. We’d like to invite you to join this lecture series and explore the different perspectives on the topic of artistic research as an encouragement to reflect on your own positioning.

Artistic research, aesthetic research, and practice-based research have gained a lot of momentum at art schools and universities in the past few decades. Focusing on alternatives to established methodologies and paradigms based on evidence, historical and political analysis, musicology, critical thinking, and cultural studies, this lecture series addresses how artistic research has been established in sound studies and in the sonic arts.

Primarily for the current MA Sound Studies and Sonic Arts students at the UdK, these talks are also open to the general public and students from all other institutions and departments.

Wedensdays | 18:00 – 20:00 p.m. | online