In this session we focus our listening on the multi-modality of voice. We venture to listen to voice beyond privileging tone, frequency or pitch, complexifying words, morphology, and language through vocality of sounds or non-verbal utterances. We will survey how forming meaning through the mouth, face, muscle and flesh, translates into possibilities of listening to voices. We collectively pay attention to the process in which the sound of the inward self is transmitted and listened to through the whole voice rhythmically as instigated by the body. Together we will search for different modes of listening – crossing between the public and the private spheres of hearing voices. Who is a voice? What is a voice and how (who) owns our voice(s)? How the idea of a voice is often commodified? What other modes can we employ in listening to voice, is it in the dubbed or in echoed? And how not all voices have equal access to the process of voicing? We are proposing to think together about how listening could open up new ways of hearing a voice.
In this collective thinking through sound we will attempt to expand our understanding of different relationships you/we have to voice. As Lucia Farinati poses in The Force of Listening “Is the act of registering voice always political? Does listening to voice necessarily mean attending to sound?’.
Each participant is asked to contribute with a 15 minutes amplified (in a microphone) response to one or more of the questions listed below. As well, free to answer to the question in any form they like: talk, song, poetry, dance and display it during this public meeting.
Is voice language, sound, or is it body? What is voice?
Does your voice sound?
Does your voice have silence?
Is your voice yours?
Does your voice have a gender?
Do you voice your body?
Has your voice always been the same?
What holds your voice back?
Whose voice do you remember?
Does your inner voice conversate?
How do you listen to the voice of the machines? How does it sound?
Whose voice are you speaking and listening with?
Have others voiced in your name or have you voiced in others name?
We are listening forward.
Please email info@oddweb.org to register for the session.
Biography
Kamila Metwaly
Kamila Metwaly, born in Warsaw 1984, is a music journalist, electronic musician and a curator based between Berlin and Cairo. Metwaly founded an independent arts and culture publication in Egypt, which specialized in music, arts and cultural writings from 2004 to 2009. Later, she worked in radio and the independent flm scene, maintaining a strong presence in Cairo’s cultural and activist scenes for many years. Since 2014, Metwaly has specialized in music journalism for various independent Egyptian and Arab publications. In 2017, Metwaly joined SAVVY Contemporary and is curating an ongoing sound project titled: Untraining the Ear Listening Sessions. She has been involved with various sound based exhibition projects in the space; including ‘What Has All This Got To Do With Coconuts And Rice: A Listening Exhibition on José Maceda’, ‘Sonic Gestures’ by Pamela Z, ‘We have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal– Of, with, towards, on Julius Eastman’; and has co-curated a retrospective exhibition “The Dog Done Gone Deaf: Exploring The Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh” with Bonaventure Ndikung in the Dak’Art Biennale in Senegal, 2018. She has been appointed as a guest research curator for the Donaueschingen New Music festival 2021 edition.