The 8th Letter

2022 | Participatory Lecture-Performance | ±60 minutes

In this participatory lecture-performance, together with a limited public of 20 people, we explore a familiar yet hidden and sometimes hostile territory, that of the vocal apparatus.
Unfolding in roughly three parts, the performance weaves together the pedagogical, the sensorial and the poetic in a chain of short stories, orchestrated actions and sounds produced by the participants, and brings the question of identification and categorisation to the fore, in a tangible and experiential manner.

During the performance, that maintains a bitter-comic tension between the gravity of the recounted episodes and the lightness and sometimes absurdity of the actions, the voice goes through different phases. It is captured, visualised, transcribed and reproduced. Technology also joins the partially-failed effort to transplant the voice, map it, measure it, sort and tame it. As the participants' and performers' voices are put into play, we all become eventually objects of this effort and threat.

 The participatory component of the performance, although part and parcel of the performance, is of a very specific character. Participation is not expressive, not exhibitionist and doesn't require any skill or talent. It is guided by instructions and can be described more as the execution of simple tasks, that become performative because done in synchronicity or otherwise orchestrated manner.

 

In this participatory lecture-performance, together with a limited public of 20 people, we explore a familiar yet hidden and sometimes hostile territory, that of the vocal apparatus.
Unfolding in roughly three parts, the performance weaves together the pedagogical, the sensorial and the poetic in a chain of short stories, orchestrated actions and sounds produced by the participants, and brings the question of identification and categorisation to the fore, in a tangible and experiential manner.

During the performance, that maintains a bitter-comic tension between the gravity of the recounted episodes and the lightness and sometimes absurdity of the actions, the voice goes through different phases. It is captured, visualised, transcribed and reproduced. Technology also joins the partially-failed effort to transplant the voice, map it, measure it, sort and tame it. As the participants' and performers' voices are put into play, we all become eventually objects of this effort and threat.

 The participatory component of the performance, although part and parcel of the performance, is of a very specific character. Participation is not expressive, not exhibitionist and doesn't require any skill or talent. It is guided by instructions and can be described more as the execution of simple tasks, that become performative because done in synchronicity or otherwise orchestrated manner.