Ornamenting Vocality. Intra-active methodology for Vocal Meaning-Making.

Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano

This exposition departs from the silence of a non-existing voice. A voice about to touch the ears and eyes of both author and readers/listeners. A voice already sounding in the head of the author - sounding as thoughts, words, letters and sentences. A non/voice being part of a never ending development of new materialities. An onto-epistemological voice diffracted through a singer's process of making sense of a lesson from a 17th century vocal manuscript. A voice as a mattering method for the art of singing through new materialist theories, vocal and discursive narratives and somatic awareness.

A voice as a mattering method for the art of singing through new materialism, vocal/verbal narratives and sensory awareness.

This exposition articulates an intra-active methodology for the art of singing based on new materialst theories with a specific focus on the sensory awareness concerning the vocal experience itself. It has been important to show that shaping and forming based on artistic vocal practice can't be separated from the meaning-making process of understanding the intricate topic of vocality and vocal expression. An intra-active process is not always easily accessible and understood. It puls and turns much due to the desire of an agential bodymind. At the same time it has been important in this exposition to indicate how the thought-moving process actually emerges. In this specific phenomenal exposition I searched not to describe a method but actually to perform the method itself. I have followed an artistic practice-led strategy, moving through the vocal practice itself, which has allowed me to discover both bodymind acts along with new verbal and visual material such as the work of La Mothe (2016), Connolly (2010), Spatz (2017), Thomaidis (2017), Uehara (2009) and others.

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I have moved through a sensory awareness of thinking, mattering and meaning-making for the sake of vocal expression. Images have been sedimented and placed as variations and ornaments in a similar way as a practicing musician would have done in a rehearsal situation. The stories of SKULDA and JEREMIAH have allowed me to intra-actively play freely with words and their irrational contexts Always in relation to thoughts and theories. As a concluding remark I can confirm that a process is about moving through mattering; it is about senstivity for relationary moments when light appears and suddenly everything becomes chrystal clear. The practie-led art of singing can be straight forward, but also, as this intra-acting exposition suggests, its can be a messy and irrational practice constructed through entangled contradictions and artistic absurdities. At this point I can only say: allow this exposition to inspire your curiosity for the im/possibilites of vocality and for further research into vocal experiences and vocal expression.

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