ORGANIZERS:

Michal Grover-Friedlander (Tel Aviv University)
Freddie Rokem (Tel Aviv University)

 

This conference aims to introduce innovative ways to conceive of staged voices and voices in performance as well as broader cultural and philosophical understandings of the human voice. Towards this aim, three notions were chosen to act as prisms through which such voices might be filtered to open new and surprising horizons of interpretation and meaning; Whispering: the notion of vocal inflection, Prompting: the notion of vocal substitution, and Shadowing: the notion of nocturnal doubling. These three notions complicate and enrich the stark dichotomies of voice/body, embodiment/disembodiment/re-embodiment and can generate insights into the elusiveness of voice as well as offer new models of illusory voices.

The three critical terms of the conference also relate to their own counterparts, from which they implicitly deviate, e.g., how in performance whispering relates to speaking, prompting to spontaneity, and shadowing to "soloistic" declamation or even to total silence. This critical anatomy of voicing and the mapping of the vocalities of performance go much further than any previous attempt to study performed voices. Therefore, the topics outlined in the proposal are critically important in the area of Performance Studies, Musicology and Literary Studies as well as of Philosophy and Aesthetics. The ideas emerging from this conference will hopefully make a significant and creative addition to the theory and philosophy of performance and hopefully also to the relevant artistic practices of singers, actors and "voice artists".

The conference will offer a unique chance to explore the affinities and interactions between performance as a practice in the arts and the endeavors to research performance in intellectual and academic contexts. It will include an array of performances by voice artists, singers and actors as well as an exploration of the acoustic modification of the voice in a variety of spaces.