Sunday, September 16, 2012

Syllabus: Bergen course

Syllabus: Bergen course

The course sets out to query the nature of voice, and to explore how it performs as material within various artistic works. The course will be run in collaboration with Prof. Ricardo Basbaum and students at the art school in Rio de Janeiro. We will connect Bergen students with students from Rio, to exchange and develop sound projects together that investigate what it means to speak, to have different languages, and to bring voices together. A final exhibition of student projects will be presented in Bergen and in Rio de Janeiro.

What particular questions does voice bring forward, and what forms of listening experience does it demand or invite? How does voice appear within our contemporary global condition, and what does it mean to be voiceless? The course will set out to unfold the voice as a sound connected to issues of identity, social exchange, political representation, embodiment and aesthetic practices. Voice will be explored as an animating and complex sound, and questioned as to how it delivers presence to material form as well as to states of collectivity.

The course will be structured as a reading seminar, as well as a platform for project development. Each session will be devoted to a particular modality of voice, from whispering and laughing to singing and stuttering. Cultural phenomena as diverse as ventriloquism, radio drama, laughing records, and voice recognition technologies, as well as particular artistic projects, will inform the course, and inspire the making of projects.

September 25, 10.00: Introduction - On Voice
September 27, 10.00: On whispering
October 17, 19.00: On laughter
October 24, 13.00: On stuttering
November 7, 10.00: On singing
December 4, 19.00: On self-talk
December 12, 19.00: On choking

Sessions to meet at Bergen Academy, C. Sundtsgate 53, 4th floor lecture room.

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