Elisabeth Belgrano: VOICE as AN IMAGINARY IR/RATIONAL FIGURE OF ANY THING

Posted on by Francesca Placanica

Dr. Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano (voice artist/priest candidate/performance philosopher) allows her performance research to diffract through contemporary vocal studies & 17th century vocal music: She is a recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society (2005); was awarded a PhD in Performance in Theatre and Music Drama for Performing Nothingness through Operatic Mad Scenes and Lamentations, Univ. of Gothenburg (2011); supervisor and examiner through ‘performative methodologies’; investigating the Art of (Vocal) Ornamentation as an intra-active research tool for measuring Nothingness and the Unknown. Currently on the track of becoming a priest in the Church of Sweden, practicing pastoral care and existential counselling. Portfolio: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/378762/430811

 

 

Her presentation in the Embodied Monologues Series will introduce

VOICE as AN IMAGINARY IR/RATIONAL FIGURE OF ANY THING

Voice cannot be imagined as separated from any bodily act or matter. It intoxicates all along without an end. Voice emerges out of No Thing (Calcagno 2003). It would not claim to be in a specific relation to gender, class, ethnicity or other classification, yet this voice can be identified as “an imaginary figure of any thing”; a paradoxical voice performed and presented out of unexpected encounters with whatever meaning there might be. Voice can – among many possibilities – be traced to 17th century Venetian music drama stages – and considered to be a symbol for Nothingness as specifically performed in operatic mad scenes. This EXPO presents research  on ‘how to perform vocal nothingness’ (Belgrano 2011)  and  letting VOICE diffract through a Baradian (feminist new materialist) methodology (Barad 2007, 2012) allowing for vocal practice to intra-act continuously with any matter or meaning encountered along the road, by “re-diffracting, diffracting anew, in the making of new temporalities (spacetimematterings)” (Barad 2014). Through this performative approach VOICE argues that vocal identity can be viewed as an entangled dance – where sound, thoughts, judgements, senses, madness, matter, chaos, vibrations and so on cannot be separated from one another – “endlessly opening itself up to a variety of possible and impossible reconfigurings” (Hinton 2013). The result that emerges from this trans-spatiotemporal study is a sensuous queering of vocality that allows individuals to experience a monstrous voice as Any Thing or No Thing, following a discourse on Nothingness that had a fundamental impact on 17th century operatic vocality and on the birth of music drama.

 

DANEIL CUNNINGHAM – A CALL TO ACTION – SWARMING

Posted on by Francesca Placanica
Daneil is a queer multi-disciplinary artist. He began exploring yoga, creative movement and voice work while training as an actor in London. With Teatr ZAR (of the Grotowski Institute, Poland), he toured to Madrid, Tbilisi, Paris, Istanbul, Edinburgh and Warsaw. He became founder and lead performer of SoundBoxed (UK) who created and toured unique immersive theatre for three years. In 2016, he began a solo career. He creates transformational artworks that explore sensuality, sexuality and spirituality through performances, photography, film and participatory workshops. He has performed his work in London’s queer night clubs, art venues and studio theatres. He also taught yoga and creative movement practice at four London drama schools (including Identity and Arts Ed – British pioneers of decolonising actor training) and led projects for adults and young people at the city’s lead arts hubs — Oval House (now Brixton House) and Roundhouse.

He moved to in Aotearoa, New Zealand from London in August 2020. He teaches yoga, pursues performance practice and soon he will begin a period of study on the Creative Arts Therapy course at Whitecliffe, Auckland.

 For the Embodied Monologues Research Series 2021-22: Re-Connect he has generously shared his video Swarming and poem A Call to Action, both to be featured on Earth Day 2022.
A Call To Action

Daneil P Cunningham

This is my gospel lamentation,

my new expression of old teachings.

Mother

It is a call to revolution, a call to embody deep ecology.

Mother

This planet is one body, this planet is Mother.

Mother

You were born from Mother, you will return to Mother.

Mother Mother Mother

Amma Amma Amma

Respect for her for she held you in her womb.

Rebirth, blind re development, wheres the space in it?

There’s a big black hole I can access, look into her eyes and drink her and then She will take you to the temple steps.

There you will taste being awake,

For you have slept for too long in your ignorance and abused your powers.

O man. Blind are you who wonders aimlessly making purchases in badly lit shops.

Drink me, man beast! Like a pint on a hot summers day, in sunny British beer garden,

Laughing and cackling the pain away, suffocating in boredom.

My rainbow juice is charged with a fruitful nectar, Divine nectar. Swallow it, guzzle it.

Man you were lied to, your minds corrupted.

Drink me, I said drink me so that I can swim in your body, I’m the breeze in your blood come touch me.

Enter me, naughty, look deep into my eyes as I squeeze my thighs around your torso like a serpent.

Power of discernment, serpent.

Where’s the space in it?

Jesus said ” when you strip without being ashamed and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little childrenand trample them, then you will see the child of the living one and you will not be afraid”

O Jesus, help us. Help us. Help us. Help Me. I am turned on. I see eroticism in it all, in your name and in my body.

I connect to you through my deep truth. My deepest truth.

O Mother, I honour you in all your names and forms. Use my body as a vehicle to facilitate change and make way for myFeminine Fury.

O Mother, you who are dressed in many Names, colours and forms

I surrender to your will, I prostrate at your gate and make offerings unto thee.

Wake me up, where my heart pounds as I feel your electricity pulse through me, as I witness sacrifice, as I make sacrifice inyour name.

Wake us up as we deliver acts of revolutionary transformations.

Merge with my symbol of Christ and set my queer heart on eternal fire,

aid us in moving from words into continual actions.

Dissolve what is useless, O most powerful Devi.

Make pathways (rivers and earth) possible for mass movements that bring together those who don’t normally mix. I makefire in your name and wait for my future body to lead the way with your grace.

Destroy what is useless in men.

I rest in this massive black hole with one pointed illumination

I open to a forcefield of eternal Love and ferocious beauty,

Divine love which comes from your all encompassing power.

Endless Salutations unto thee,

Be with me and be with us as we, without fear – Enter Creatrix.