The Resonance of Vocalising by Sophia Bardoutsou

The aim of this PD project is to bring artists and citizens together with each other and their environment, and collectively explore how the wordless voice can be a means of communication. Artists leading this project bring understanding from the multiple fields in which they are working – music, theatre, visual arts, and circus. In addition to the collective exploration of connection, the objective is to propose a methodology (which combines and develops from a range of existing methods and is provisionally termed “Resonant Cycles”) and investigate if it can have a transformative impact on the subjectivities of the individual participants. The project involves interventions in the field of performing arts with the goal of modeling less language-dependent and more inclusive, sensory-rich experiences of cross-disciplinary creation and performance. It invites a holistic and immersive experience of performing arts that brings the physical voice to the forefront and prompts reflection on the essence and meaning of vocal sound regardless of language, and the way that sound itself functions as a means of communication.

BACK

METHOD

The first two sessions in November 2024 were led by Laurens Voois and Leander Pot from Collective Brownout. Laurens is a sound engineer and Leander is a carpenter who guided the participants through the making of aeolian instruments. Instruments that sound through vibrations caused by the movement of the wind. What can we learn about our voice by attempting to create an instrument? In which corner of our body does our voice dwell?

co-creation was playfully explored both as a design method and a way of listening. A custom harp was collaboratively designed and assembled, encouraging hands-on engagement and collective knowledge-building.

The sessions were hosted at Buitenplaats Brienenoord in Rotterdam South.

THEORY

The voice resists singular definition, existing as a fundamental paradox that defies fixed location within the body or language. To understand "my voice" and the relevant theory and methods for this new provisional methodology of the Resonant Cycles, I started looking at the voices of others; well-formulated arguments from the humanities and other fields. Across disciplines—sound studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and performance art—the voice emerges not as an object but as an action, always in motion, always relational.

Some voice scientists restrict its meaning to the sound produced by the vocal folds, while others argue that the voice encompasses the entire musculoskeletal system and the brain’s intricate neural processes.

Brandon LaBelle’s work in sound studies echoes this tension, describing voice as an “oral tension” rather than a fixed object. He critiques the tendency to treat voice as a given, instead urging us to consider how voice is lodged within the mouth’s physicality and the dynamics of social interaction (LaBelle, Brandon. "Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary." A&C Black, 2014). The voice emerges as a negotiation between body, language, and the listener.

Psychoanalysis further complicates the voice’s location. For Lacan, the ear’s cavity serves as a metaphor for the symbolic void of the Other—the social and linguistic structures that shape subjectivity. The voice resonates within this void, existing only through its relational capacity to address and be heard by the Other. Mladen Dolar reinforces this perspective, describing the voice not as a self-contained entity but as a trace of desire, fundamentally unplaceable and always oriented toward the Other (Dolar, Mladen. "A Voice and Nothing More." MIT Press, 2006).

Philosophically, Ron Scapp highlights the voice’s relational nature by tying audibility to legitimacy. To be heard is not simply to produce sound, but to have an effect on others—to enter into a space of social recognition and difference (Scapp, Ron. "A Question of Voice: Philosophy and the Search for Legitimacy." University of Michigan Press, 2020). This understanding reinforces that voice is not self-sufficient but always embedded in networks of power and meaning.

Performance art offers a final lens through which to view the voice as an action rather than an object. The Fluxus movement’s emphasis on flow and continuous transformation positions voice as a dynamic process. Voice, like performance itself, unfolds in time and can never be fully captured or fixed (The Museum of Modern Art. "George Maciunas. Fluxus Manifesto. 1963").

Taken together, these perspectives reveal the voice as an act of becoming—an ongoing movement between the self and the Other. Its essence lies not in any one anatomical site, but in its perpetual flux, relationality, and resistance to containment.

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