An academy cared for debating
and conversing.
Anything was on their mind.
Knowing from the unknown
was part of their emblem.
They called themselves
ACADEMY of the UNKNOWN.
One conversation developed
into a serious debate between Venetian and Parisian academics
on the topic of Nothingness.
The result:
VOICE became equal to NOTHINGNESS.
(Calcagno 2003, Belgrano 2011)
The year was 1641.
The place was at the Teatro Novissimo
in Venice.
The scene was mad.
Or Feigned mad.
The newly composed opera was
La Finta Pazza.
(Belgrano 2011:243)
The academic strategies
where performative
and driven by madness.
Or feigned madness.
Voice spoke meaning.
Coloring every word with thousand different meanings.
Some spoken.
Some in silence.
Meaning appeared in and between words.
A word embodied meaning –
spoken and in silence.
There were tears,
laughter, death, despair,
leaps between wor/l/ds
making absolute non/sense.
The orna/menting voice says:
“I care and cure
for making meaning
at the very beginning.
This is the process performing-as-doing: Everything begins again and again.
Always a new beginning.”
(Belgrano 2019)
Voice kept thinking while in silence.
How could all this (feigned) madness
be met?
What does happen inside a listener?
What happens inside a group of listeners? What is incorporated into the act
of making non/sense
that can be figured visually?
When is an identity?
What makes an identity an identity?
“Hidden behind the discrete and independent objects of the sense world is an entangled realm, in which the simple notions of identity and locality no longer apply” (Barad 2012:8)
“The intimate touch of nothingness is threaded through all being/becoming, a tangible indeterminacy that goes to the heart of matter. Matter is not iteratively reconstituted through various intra-actions, it is also infinitely and infinitesimally shot through with alterity”
(Barad 2012:8)
REFERENCES
Barad, K. (2012, v1.1) On Touching—The Inhuman That Therefore I Am, differences, 23(3): 206-223, current version pp. 1-16, http://planetarities.web.unc.edu/files/2015/01/barad-on-touching.pdf [accessed 15/03/2019]
Belgrano, Elisabeth (2011) “Lasciatemi morire” o faro “La Finta Pazza”: Embodying Vocal Nothingness on Stage in 17th Century Italian and French Operatic Laments and Mad Scenes, ArtMonitor, doctoral diss. Gothenburg, 2011, https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/397858/397859 [accessed 15/03/2019]
Belgrano, E. Laasonen (2019) ‘A Singing Orna/Mentor's Performance or Ir/rational Practice‘, RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research, 11 (2019) https://doi.org/10.22501/ruu.402061 [accessed 05/03/2022], www.ruukku-journal.fi
Calcagno, M. (2003) Signifying Nothing: On the Aesthetics of Pure Voice in Early Venetian Opera, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 20, Nr. 4, s. 461-497.
Laasonen Belgrano, E.(2020) Mapping the Burden of Vocality: French 17th Century Vocal Lamentations, Japanese Meditation and Somatic Intra-Action”, in: Somatic Voices in Performance Research, Kapadocha C. (ed), Routledge Voice Studies: Research Monographs. Introducing chapter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjUtJ0_xgKs
This EXPO was presented for the first time at the following conf.:
Belgrano, E. & Ross, B.
VOICE: an Imaginary Ir/Rational Figure of Any Thing and No Thing. (A no paper presentation). Between Institution and Intoxication: How does Performance Philosophy Intervene?, Univ. of Amsterdam, Theatre Studies, 14-17 March
Elisabeh Laasonen Belgrano Belgrano & Björn Ross
Inter Arts Center, Lund Univ.
Nordic Network for Early Opera & Nordic Network for Vocal Performance Research
No Self Can Tell (Laasonen Belgrano & Price 2022
I keep on looking
into the eyes of the other.
Eyes are like fires.
Burning.
Shooting.
Attached to the gaze
comes a demanding question.
Posed in silence.
Critically acted out.
Performed.
Demanding a response.
The gaze of the other
is returning with a shot.
A dialogue is developing.
Through burning fires.
Response is brutal.
Criticality is ready to stab.
To kill.
To disconnect.
To disrupt.