Brandon LaBelle, Christof Migone (eds.): Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language (2001)

“Writing Aloud is an anthology focusing on the relationship of language to sound, writing to music, and brings together a highly diverse collection of essays, interviews, meditations, visual projects, text-sound scores and audio by some of the leading individuals in the field of cultural and performance studies, experimental music and contemporary art.

Starting from the perspective that the sound of the voice is crucial to our perceptions and understandings of language, to the creative possibility of being without language, Writing Aloud examines the repercussions of such a perspective. Considering the sonics of words, it extends this examination of vocalization and articulation into how it contributes to and influences communication and notions of self-recognition. And further, how orality effects the act of writing itself, stages the tension between sense and non-sense, and provides space for self-reflection.

Through cultural, historical, linguistic, musical and artistic histories and practices, this field of research is addressed in order to open up a diversity of attitudes and approaches toward a broader understanding of what it means to speak. Such works as Nicholas Zurbrugg’s detailed examination of the history of sound-poetry, which underscores this often under-represented field as being a vital link between the avant-gardes of modernism and contemporary culture; Sean Cubitt’s meditation on the voice in relation to contemporary technologies; and Fred Moten’s examination of the Black avant-garde through the works of Billy Strayhorn, Delaney, and Antonin Artaud in relation to deeper questions of identity – these original works advance our understanding of ‘vocalization’ as existing within a complex and highly charged social, political and cultural arena where identity is a contested site.

In conjunction with these analytical works, Writing Aloud also provides readers with some valuable reconsiderations and reproductions of historical work, such as Marina Abramovic’s performance from 1975, Freeing the Voice, in which the artist exhales every breath as a scream for one hour; plus a revealing and insightful interview with the composer Alvin Lucier, whose compositions from the 60s to today continue to challenge and astound listeners; a valuable document of a long lost French artist, Arthur Petronio, whose recordings from the mid-60s, Verbophonie, trace a highly personal and idiosyncratic terrain of voice and electronics; and important visual and audio documentation of an early installation, Body Building, by the artist Vito Acconci. Through such a range of contributions Writing Aloud suggests links between disparate practices and stimulates conversations between disciplines, one which follows the line where text and sound meet, speaking and music collide, and theory and writing converse.

Also included in the anthology are GX Jupitter-Larsen, Terri Kapsalis, Norie Neumark, Kim Dawn, Alexandre St-Onge, Jocelyn Robert, Robert Ashley, Achim Wollscheid, Bart Plantenga, Vincent Barras, Michel Chion, John Duncan, and others.”

Publisher Errant Bodies, Los Angeles, 2001
ISBN 9780965557030, 0965557030
279 pages
via cmigone

Reviews: Christopher DeLaurenti (The Tentacle, 2001), Jim Drobnick (Parachute, 2002), John Dack (Computer Music Journal, 2003).

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Katalin Cseh-Varga, Adam Czirak (eds.): Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere: Event-Based Art in Late Socialist Europe (2018)

“Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances.

The artistic networks of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are discussed with a particular focus on the discourses that shaped artistic practice at the time, drawing on the methods of Performance Studies and Media Studies as well as more familiar reference points from art history and area studies.”

Contributors: Roddy Hunter, Miško Šuvaković, Dietmar Unterkofler, Ileana Pintilie, Cristian Nae, Andrej Mirčev, Andrea Bátorová, Berenika Szymanski-Düll, Kata Krasznahorkai, Laine Kristberga, Adam Czirak, Amy Bryzgel, Jasmina Tumbas, Beáta Hock, Angelika Richter, Maja Fowkes and Reuben Fowkes.

Publisher Routledge, London, 2018
ISBN 9781138723276, 1138723274
xii+263 pages

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Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective (1987)

“In 1985, Ana Mendieta died tragically. During her 36 years of life she produced a tremendous amount of work covering a range of activities that included performance, installation, and sculpture. Her death cut short her prolific career and left the art world and those who knew her void of a feisty, political, and passionate human being.

After Mendieta’s death, her sister and estate executer, Raquel Mendieta Harrington, formed an art advisory committee comprised of Mendieta’s friends to insure that her work would be compiled, catalogued, and exhibited. John Perreault and Petra Barreras del Rio were chosen to curate a retrospective exhibition of important selections representing a full range of work that had never before been presented together. The result was an exhibition held at the New Museum in New York City, November 1987 through January 1988. Ana Mendieta: A Retrospective affirmed the abundance, strength, and significance of Mendieta’s work.”

With essays by Petra Barreras del Rio and John Perrault.

Publisher New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1987
ISBN 0915557614, 9780915557615
85 pages

Exh. review: Michael Brenson (New York Times, 1987).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

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