Keynotes: Michal Grover-Friedlander, Paul Elliman.
Presentations: Hannah Bosma, Kris Dittel, Brigitte Felderer, Jelena Novak, Veronika Witte, Katarina Zdjelar.

The symposium Installing the Voice focuses on the ways in which contemporary artists, composers and performers reinvent the relationship between the body and the voice. There is hardly any other artistic genre where the voice is more essential than in opera. Yet the operatic singing body was long taken for granted and overlooked. Installing the voice, in the framework of music theatre and especially of an exhibition, can be a strategy to make the voice manifest, give it a place, put it into position, and set it up for analysis or experimentation.

This one-day event is a collaboration with Operadagen and gathers both researchers in the emerging field of Voice Studies, Musicology, Opera Studies and Cultural Theory, and artists who explore the singing body in contexts beyond opera.

The participants will address topics related to staging the voice, the cultural history of the human voice, the emergence of singing and speaking machines, the voice in the post-human era, and vocality and power.

Language: English
Free admission, registration required via this link.
Location: TENT, Witte de Withstraat 50 in Rotterdam.

Symposium Programme

12.30-13.00 Registration and coffee
13.00-13.40 Michal Grover-Friedlander, “Staging the Voice”, Keynote lecture
13.40.-14.20 Paul Elliman, “More Thrills and Regressions”, Siren Keynote*

14.20-14.30 Coffee break

14.30-15.00 Brigitte Felderer, “Temporality in Space”
15.00-15.30 Katarina Zdjelar, “Politics of the Voice”
15.30-15.50 Kris Dittel, “Vocal Becomings”

15.50-16.00 Coffee break

16.00-16.30 Hannah Bosma, “Talking Heads and Singing Machines”
16.30-17.00 Veronika Witte, “Einstein on the Beach as a Multi-Perspective Opera Installation”
17.00-17.30 Jelena Novak, “Installing the Operatic”

17.30-18.00 Preview of the transmedia documentary project “Martin Riches: Time Machines” by Sergio Gridelli, Armeno Alberts and Hannah Bosma (excerpts). Introduction by Hannah Bosma

More information about the contributors can be found here.

*With a performance of “How we learn the old songs” by Angelo Custodio, Paul Elliman, Burkhard Körner, Annelie Koning, Oneka von Schrader, Kevin Walton.

This symposium is supported by: Mondriaan Fonds, Operadagen Rotterdam, CESEM – Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music, NOVA FCSH – Nova School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, and FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology.