Language

Jacques Derrida – Of Grammatology

Jacques Derrida.

Of Grammatology.

1976.

Book.

Reading Derrida is difficult. Sentences are often as long as paragraphs, with multiple bracketed qualifications. I’ve had to read Part One: Writing Before the Letter four times and still I’m only scratching the surface. Despite this, part one alone has been a gold mine of ideas relevant to my masters project.

‘And, finally, whether it has essential limits or not, the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing. If the theory of cybernetics is by itself to oust all metaphysical concepts – including concepts of the soul, of life, of value, of choice, of memory – which until recently served to seperate the machine from man, it must conserve the notion of writing, trace, grammè, [written mark], or grapheme, until its own historico-metaphysical character is also exposed.’ (p. 9)

This is the missing link which I’ve been looking for and relates to my own practice through the idea of artifice – that in order to expose or undermine stable and naturalistic representations of the human voice, that process of exposure need to lay bare its own mechanics. This is what perhaps interested both Barthes and Sontag about Bunraku theatre, that not only is the human experience presented as the flimsiest of surfaces, but that its mechanics only point to other mechanics. – ‘the signifier cunningly does nothing but turn itself inside out, like a glove’ (Barthes – P. 49). In showing that representation proceeds the real, representation must never itself become another refuge for the soul.

Barthes. R. (1983). ‘The Three Writings’. In: Empire of Signs. Translated by R. Howard. Los Angeles, USA: Hill & Wang. pp. 58 – 60.

Derrida. J. (1976). ‘Writing before the letter‘. In: Of Grammatology. Translated by G. C. Spivak. Baltimore & London. John Hopkins University Press. pp. 1 – 87.

Sontag. S. (1984). A Note on Bunraku. In: The Threepenny Review, No. 16. California, USA: Threepenny Review. pp. 16.

Categories: Language / Transhuman

Laurie Anderson – O Superman.

O Superman.

Laurie Anderson.

1982.

Single, from the LP – Big Science, Warner Records.

Through a sophisticated multi-layering, Laurie Anderson addresses the voice as it exists both inside and outside of the body, through both content and form. For what is possibly her best known work, Anderson vocalises fragments from the masses. Small sound bites and quotations which move fluidly through society like viruses. Through these completely inane snippets, she highlights the way in which our bodies are only temporary vessels for multiple voices; which themselves reside elsewhere, in a kind of communal extra-space. This Frankenstienien collage of catch phrases constitutes for Anderson not a hollowing out of the self, but a defensive outer layer, a kind of sound mask.

As a work which closely relates to post-structuralist theory, it has prompted me to consider the way in which sound or more specifically our aural relationship to the world, was pivotal to the post-structuralist project. In contrast to the Enlightenment’s prioritising of ocular dominance which emphasised stability, clarity and essentialism – sound instead draws our attention instead to the relational, networked, causative and inherently unstable nature of knowledge and culture.

Anderson. L. (1982). O Superman. [Music single]. Los Angles, USA. Warner Records.

Categories: Avatars / Processed Voice / Language

Christian Marclay – Manga Scroll

Following on from Marinetti’s sound poems I’m reminded of Christian Marclay’s Manga Scroll, which also highlights the materiality of the voice through the use of onomatopoeia. As far as I can tell, unlike the futurists Marclay thankfully isn’t using these scripts to forward a fascist agenda, instead it appears he’s trying to draw our attention towards the way in which the materiality of the world is organised through the range of the human voice. While writers such as Foucault have argued it’s through language that we order our experience of the world. What about all of those vocalisations which exist outside or on the cusp of language. We’re born into bodies with ears which prioritise the frequencies of human speech, and in this way our experience of all sounds (not only language) is ordered through that sonic range; all within a reference frame tuned to the voice. This is why the wind howls, the ship groans and fingernails on a blackboard shriek.

With regards to the two performances, I was captivated by just how bombastic both Joan La Barbara’s and Theo Blekmann’s renditions are. If you’re going to implicate your own body into a work, in a way which questions our material relationship to the world, all the better to take it to the limit! Make us aware of where the edges are.

Barbara. J. L. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Extended voice performance]. New York, USA. Accessed 13/08/2019. https://youtu.be/SqtGrpjI9Yw

Bleckmann. T. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Extended voice performance]. New York, USA. Accessed 13/08/2019. https://youtu.be/k8goKkTGJqI

Marclay. C. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Lithographic print 19″ x 3″ x 3″]. London, UK.

Image: https://graphicstudiousf.wordpress.com

Categories: Language / Voice as Material / Processed Voice