vocal creatures

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An Interdisciplinary Symposium
with Lectures, Lecture Performances, Workshops and Performances

Two days of intensive exchange with artists, researchers, scientists and musicians will take place during the symposium vocal creatures. From the perspectives of visual art, music, performance and theory, the contributions form a polyphonic interplay of physical and post-physical voices that address the relevance of the human voice.
The physical human voice itself is elusive: it consists of the transient interaction of lungs, vocal cords, tongue and palate. It is always simultaneously inside and outside the body, it is immaterial and has considerable social and political weight. It is never just a tool of articulation, but is always linked to action.
In the course of current technological develepments, our view of (human) bodies, their voices and directly linked ‘identities’ is changing. To what extent does the activation of autonomous social agents (AI) influence our perception and understanding of what constitutes a ‘voice’? In what ways can vocal territories be deconstructed and hierarchical as well as other binary systems of listening and speaking be superseded? What are vocal creatures under these conditions – hybrid beings between archaic elemental force and synthetic construction?
The contributions focus on artistic and scientific reflections on the performativity of physical sound, on the decoupling of the voice from the human body and how it can function as a tool of political self-empowerment. The voice as pure, space-filling material will be audible as well as its social echo.

Team of Curators:
Adi Levant, Karen Scheper, Laurie Schwartz, Veronika Witte

PROGRAMME

FRIDAY, 23 JUNE

7:00 pm: Birds’ Conversations. Dedicated to the Endangered Birds (2016), Performance by Natalia Pschenitschnikova

7:15 pm: vocal creatures, Welcome address by Veronika Witte (de)

7:30 pm: Die Stimme des Körpers, der Klang der Sprache: Zur Vielstimmigkeit der Künste, Lecture by Prof. Dr. Sabine Sanio (de)

8:15 pm: Voice Maps of Memory (2023), Performance by Natalia Pschenitschnikova

8:30 pm: Aglossostomography – Or How to Speak without a Tongue, Lecture Performance by Erik Bünger (en)

9:30 pm: Disfiguration, Performance by Marcelo Aguirre

SATURDAY, 24 JUNE

11:00 am: Welcome and Programme Presentation, Curators’ team

11:15 am: How Can the Voice Be Used as a Way to Decode Colonialism within AI?, Lecture by Dr. Tiara Roxanne (en)

12:00 pm: Gender-related Voice in Speech Therapy, Lecture by Jonny Labrada Ramirez (de)

12:45 pm: Moving, Hearing, and Feeling: A Non-verbal and Vocal Interaction with the SENTIRE System, Demonstration and open workshop with Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim and Marcello Lussana (en/de)

2:00 pm: IMAGINE VOICE, Workshop with Ursula Fischer (en/de)

2:00 pm: VOICE:Encounter, Workshop with Adì Levant and Alena Trapp (en/de)

3:00 pm: PRET A CHANTER™, Performance installation by Lore Lixenberg (en)

4:00 pm: Synthetic Voices and Artificial Intelligence, Lecture by Dr. Inke Arns (de)

5:00 pm: The Voice Inbetween, Lecture Performance with Jasmina and Kamila Metwaly (en)

5:30 pm: The Sound of Vocal Creatures, Panel Discussion with Hans Peter Kuhn, Kamila and Jasmina Metwaly, meLê yamomo; moderated by Dr. Irene Lehmann (en)

6:45 pm: Closing Address and Thanks

7:00 pm: But for Today I Am, Choir Performance by Chryssa Tsampazi

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FRIDAY, 23 June

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7 pm
Birds’ Conversations. Dedicated to the Endangered Birds (2016)
Natalia Pschenitschnikova, composer, singer, performer

Pschenitschnikova presents her work for solo voice and electronics with text from Welimir Chlebnikovs Zangezi.
www.natalia-pschenitschnikova.com

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7:15 pm
vocal creatures
Welcome Address (de)
Veronika Witte, Artistic Director Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten

Concept and Development of the Programme Series VOICE:over

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7:30 pm
Die Stimme des Körpers, der Klang der Sprache: Zur Vielstimmigkeit der Künste
Lecture (de)
Prof. Dr. Sabine Sanio, Musicologist, Sound Studies

Since the 1960s, voice and body have gained much attention in the visual arts and shaped the new performative arts. Connected to language as much as to the body, the voice has always been indispensable for music and song as well as for literature and theatre. Its importance for the visual arts in the 20th century results from a rapprochement of the arts with each other, which today makes the boundaries between them appear permeable. The lecture explains this process of rapprochement by means of exemplary positions of diverse genres.
www.udk-berlin.de/en/person/sabine-sanio

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8:15 pm
Voice Maps of Memory (2023)
Natalia Pschenitschnikova, composer, singer, performer
World premiere of a fragment from the project Aura
(after Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diary, funded by the Musikfonds Berlin)
www.natalia-pschenitschnikova.com

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8:30 pm
Aglossostomography – Or How to Speak without a Tongue
Lecture Performance (en)
Erik Bünger, artist, writer, composer

Erik Bünger’s lecture performance examines the recurrent historical phenomenon of a tongue without a tongue. If there is no necessary connection between language and tongue, if the words we speak belong to no particular limb in our bodies, then where does language come from? Bünger performs about language as a medium within the medium itself.
www.erikbunger.com

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9:30 pm
Disfiguration
Performance for voice, drums, gongs, and tape
Marcelo Aguirre, performer, sound artist

The voice as an accident of nature, run over, car-crashed, maltreated, devoid of intentional meaning, buried alive under a mess of rhythmic skin and steel.
www.evilspirit.bandcamp.com, www.aeternumsacro.de

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SATURDAY, 24 June

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The Saturday events will be moderated by Dr. Irene Lehmann, music and theatre scholar, author and dramaturge.

In her research, writing processes and dramaturgical practice, Irene Lehmann deals with experimental music, music theatre and dance as well as with knowledge production between science and the arts and cooperative forms of production.

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Morning Programme

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11 am
Welcome and Programme Presentation
Curators’ team

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11:15 am
How Can the Voice Be Used as a Way to Decode Colonialism within AI?
Lecture (en)
Dr. Tiara Roxanne, scholar and artist

In this talk, Roxanne will discuss forms of opacity and surveillance and different ways we think about the voice in a technological and anti-colonial perspective. They explain how the voice is collected as data and used as a form of surveillance in AI systems. How can we to self-advocate our privacy and protect our opacity?
www.tiararoxanne.com

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12 pm
Gender-related Voice in Speech Therapy
Lecture (de)
Jonny Labrada Ramirez, speech therapist

In gender-related voice work, the question arises as to which types of voice production are ‘given’ and which are ‘formed’. The voice itself is the point of reference for an illusory stable identity. In his lecture, Labrada Ramirez presents concepts from different sciences and humanities and analyses the agency, negotiations of interests, body practices and thus the inscription processes of the voice and advocates the acceptance of the ‘many-faced/hecatic’ voice.
www.jonny-labrada.jimdofree.com

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12:45–1:45 pm
Moving, Hearing, and Feeling: A Non-verbal and Vocal Interaction with the SENTIRE System
Demonstration and open workshop (English/German)
Prof. Dr. Jin Hyun Kim, musicologist
Marcello Lussana, sound artist, interactions designer

The non-verbal interactive sound system SENTIRE is presented and demonstrated in a micro-phenological interview. The research system is used artistically and therapeutically, among other things, to explore the self and the other.
In a guided workshop, a maximum of 10 people will have the opportunity to interact live with the system.
www.sentire.me

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2–3 pm
Lunch Break

During this period, the exhibition Stimme erleben: Apparaturen – Maschinen – Aggregate in Galerie Nord is open to visitors.

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Practical Workshops

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2–3:30 pm
IMAGINE VOICE
Workshop (en/de)
Ursula Fischer, stage director

Wir können mit uns selber sprechen, mit dem Spiegel, im Fahrstuhl oder mit dem Knie.
Wie artikulieren sich Gesten, die wir beim Abschiednehmen entwickeln? Wie klingt es, wenn das eingekaufte Obst aus der kaputten Tüte fällt? Die Improvisation mit der Stimme ist eine Form des Lernens, bei der das Objekt, das Gegenüber und der Moment eine wichtige Rolle spielen.

Max. 30 participants. Please bring comfortable clothes.
Advance booking is requested: scheper@kunstverein-tiergarten.de
www.ursula-fischer.com

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2–3:30 pm
VOICE:Encounter
Workshop (de and English)
Adì Levant, singer, voice researcher
Alena Trapp, visual artist

Stimmen changieren beständig zwischen Kontaktaufnahme und Rückzug, geprägt von
dem Bedürfnis nach Verständigung und von kulturellen Codes, welche die alltägliche Kommunikation und Interaktion schraffieren.
Die eigene Stimme kann auch eine Manifestation von uns selbst darstellen. Sie ist in tagtäglicher Benutzung – aber kennen wir sie überhaupt? Welche Techniken gibt es, ihr zu begegnen? (DE/EN)

Max. 15 participants.
Advance booking is requested: scheper@kunstverein-tiergarten.de

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Afternoon programme

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3–4 pm
PRET A CHANTER™
Performance installation (en)
Lore Lixenberg, voice and sound artist

‘No speaking. Only vocalisations other than speaking are allowed.’
PRET A CHANTER™ is a post-internet, post-cyborg real-time opera that seeks to blur the boundaries between art and life, vocalisations, different cultures, economic and post-economy systems and psychologies. Anyone who enters PRET A CHANTER™ must succumb to the experiment that is opera.
www.lorelixenberg.art

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4 pm
Synthetic Voices and Artificial Intelligence
Lecture (de)
Dr. Inke Arns, curator and director HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein

Arns talks about the influence of synthetic voices and artificial intelligence on art and society. Artificial intelligence is pattern recognition in large amounts of data plus machine learning – that also works with the human voice. If the detachment of the human voice from its body (schizophony) was an uncanny moment in media history, current voice or oral deep fakes go one step further by making voices say things that were never actually said.
www.inkearns.de

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5 pm
The Voice Inbetween
Lecture Performance (en)
Jasmina Metwaly, visual artist, film-maker
Kamila Metwaly, artistic director MaerzMusik

In their lecture performance, Jasmina and Kamila Metwaly weave a web of sounds, texts and research materials on the multimodality of the voice, which they have explored in their artistic research since 2021. Can we hear Voice beyond speech and what can the oral cavity communicate in gestures? Various vocal (or voice) notations and speech-like fragments are arranged around vocal exercises and protest songs.

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Afterwards, 5:30–6:30 pm
The Sound of Vocal Creatures
Moderated Panel Discussion (en)
With Hans Peter Kuhn (sound artist, composer), Kamila and Jasmina Metwaly, meLê yamomo (researcher, composer, theatre maker)

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Closing Address and Thanks
Team of Curators

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Closing
7 pm
But for Today I Am
Choir Performance in Public Spaces
Chryssa Tsampazi, performance artist

Tsampazi’s adaptation of a song by Antony and the Johnsons addresses the personal becoming and transformation beyond gender stereotypes. Tsampazi invites all the participants of the symposium to sing with the Berlin Police Choir, the Senior Chorus Steglitz and passers-by at two locations in Moabit.
Start: In front of Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten
www.tsampazi.com

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Programme Series VOICE:over

The Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten’s VOICE:over programme series delves into various phenomena related to voice. With cross-disciplinary exhibition projects, performances and a multifaceted outreach programme, VOICE:over explores the changes in meaning and significance of physical and social forms of the voice – from screams to speech and song to artificial intelligences’ posthuman imitation of the human voice.

Supported by the federal programme “Neustart Kultur” of Stiftung Kunstfonds and the multi-sector funding of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.

Verbundene Ausstellung: