Fornieles, Eloise; (2023) Utter monster: How my performing voice creates queer space and generates alternative gender narratives. Doctoral thesis (PhD), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This practice-led research investigates how the performing voice can create queer space and generate alternative gender narratives. Through works of art that apply methods including vocal masks, alter egos, collage, storytelling and monstering, it aims to show how vocal performance can unsettle fixed and binary formulations of gender and facilitate fluid and polyvalent ones. To that end, this report presents three key bodies of practice: (i) performed alter egos, (ii) vocal sound works and (iii) video. Brian Kane’s model of vocal analysis – which cross-sections Topos (site), Logos (meaning), Echos (sound) and Techne (technology) – is used to consider how vocal performance can upset the norms embedded in vocalising and establish new sets of relations. My research challenges Lacan’s definition of the voice as the unobtainable objet petit a, a theory endorsed by Mladen Dolar in A Voice and Nothing More, and instead builds upon the voice as a relational bridge between active parties incorporating Miriama Young’s understanding of the voice as a technology. Autopoiesis figures as a performative feedback loop in which listening figures as a vital component, following theories of Quantum Listening and Deep Listening as theorised by Pauline Oliveros. Adriana Caverero, Michael Chion, Mladen Dolar, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Brian Kane, Jacques Lacan and Miriama Young provide theories on the voice to which the works of art created in the course of my research respond. I extrapolate Floya Anthias’ concept of Translocational Positionality as a means of analysing the fluid nature of intersectional gender identities. The artworks apply feminist queer theories – Xenofeminism (Helen Hester), Shadow Feminism (Jack Halberstam) and Glitch Feminism (Legacy Russell) – to the task of undermining binary gender narratives and constructing vi space for the production of alternatives. The ideas of Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and Audre Lorde are among those used to analyse and evaluate the works of art, while performances by Laurie Anderson, Leigh Bowery, Samuel Beckett, Lydia Lunch, Paul McCarthy, Adrian Piper and Marianna Simnett provide context for the relation between voice and gender.

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