From January to March 2024 I was Winter Artist in Residence in the Pervasive Media Studio at Watershed in Bristol. I was given the residency on the basis of my proposal ‘Investigating a Domestic Vocal System’. The time there gave me a chance to do some research and making, to explore the viability of this idea of a non-human vocal system, or some sort of assemblage that produced a voice.
I’ve been a fan of Jane Bennett’s ‘Vibrant Matter’ so had another read of that, and really enjoyed the early section where she discussed Adorno’s Negative Dialecticts, which appears to suggest that even if we accept that some things are out of reach and ‘un-sum-up-able’, like the character and voice of the home, we can, never the less, lean into this knowledge and, as part of it ourselves, still try to give it meaning. One of Adorno’s strategies for doing this, shared by Bennett, is the act of being ‘willing to play the fool.’ Even tough I am obviously never going to know the ‘nonidentity’ of the house, Adorno suggests we should ‘talk as if we know it entirely’ and move towards ‘the point of clowning.’ This resonates because it is patently ridiculous to suggest something like a house can have a voice, can sing, or whatever, yet it has something, and perhaps by exploring this ridiculousness this something, somehow, comes slightly closer?
I wrote about the activity during the residency in three blog posts. They can he found here:
Why Investigate a Domestic Vocal System?