ABOUT

From Breath To Matter started very boldly in late 2017 with a question circulated by Alessio Castellacci and Jule Flierl: How can the voice strip bare of messages and become perceivable as a politically charged medium? Responding to this difficult question became an evolving task that has brought together a community interested in sharing their methodologies around both performing and thinking through a deeper examination of the voice and its diverse performative potentials. Music appears in breathing, screaming, language deconstruction and extended vocalising. The division between an instrumentalist and vocalist does not exist within the context of activating vocal dances where the body itself becomes the instrument that carries the voice, which itself carries the content. More questions follow: How is content generated through vocal practices? How does one perform an idea? How does a question get embodied?

From Breath To Matter offers a space to experiment with processes of identifying and dis-identifying one’s own voice, riding the line between signifying through language and giving meaning through the physicality of voicing. It invites artists to complicate the directionality of sensing, all the while breath, movement, and affect resist completion. The mouth is an ambiguous threshold of vibration and manifestation, what space is occupied when matter attunes itself to breathing? This is a space to listen to the noise of bodies and their discourses. When questioning the means of transmission of meaning, the unity of the body and voice is put to question. Working within this instability, the experiential dimension of vocal practices becomes enriched by the investigation into the body, with the body as a transmitter of meaning. 

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From Breath To Matter is curated and produced by Jule Flierl, with support from Alessio Castellacci (2017–18) and Mika Hayashi Ebbesen (2018–21).

 

fbtm.berlin [at] gmail.com