Tembeck_Aural Cinemas

With the rise of the iconic and performative turns in the past decades, scholarship about images has increased, and so has research into voice. Both have been examined from various perspectives to date, but surprisingly few studies take into consideration the points at which images and voices converge. This, in spite of the vast reproduction of images and voices in everyday cultural practices in the arts and sciences. Like images, recorded voices and sounds are fluid and ubiquitous means of communication, as are the compositions, fusions and montages they generate. Images and voices effectively make up the dominant modes of knowledge transfer occurring beneath language.

The “Image, Voice II” conference addresses the prevalence of voices and images by systematically approaching “figures” of the audiovisual in diverse contexts, media, historic frames and cultural conditions. The concept of figure/figuration serves as the methodological framework bringing together theories on images and sounds. In this framework, images and voices are not only understood as systems of signification, but are also identified through convergent and recurrent patterns and forms. “Figure” introduces the notion of process, which underpins time-based modes of generating meaning (Sinnerzeugung). From Roman Antiquity to modern concepts of rhetoric, and in Gestalt psychology as well, figures (in contrast to “form” or “scheme”) are characterized by their mobility and plasticity. Recent studies in linguistic and performance theory emphasize the movements and multiplicity of figures in the process of figuration. “Figuration” thus accentuates a temporal play already existing in “figure.” Both terms present a permanently altering relation of figure and ground (Figurieren, Grundieren), which generates a certain mode of meaning beyond language. These concepts of figuration and movement apply to both static images and to the figuration of voices, as well as to music and to visuality in film and in other moving images.

This conference pursues the inquiries of our inaugural symposium, “Image, Voice I: Showing Voices,” held in Basel in December 2007. The initial lectures, discussions and workshops defined our field of research, and identified the borders and transgressions that arise in and between theories and practices of voice and image. “Image, Voice II” is based on the insights and further lines of inquiry that were generated by the inaugural symposium, and is dedicated to a theory of the audiovisual. Alongside voices, the conference investigates interactions between images and sound or music. Structural imagery in musical compositions is also taken into consideration, as are audiovisual realities in the physiology of the senses, in the production of field recordings, and in literary textures that reveal the traces of voices. The idea of figure/figuration as a temporal principle of interaction between visibility and sound serves as the theoretical framework that binds diverse areas in the humanities and sciences. Methodological thoughts are allied with analyses of artworks (film, opera, installation, body/performance art, theatre), and non-artistic audiovisual phenomena in this symposium. Pivotal questions will include: How can the quality and impact of audiovisual figures be assessed? How can the simultaneous presence and absence of voices, their relation to the body, and their expansion in space be explained? How do image and sound interact? How can we describe the interplay of figure and non-figure in the audiovisual? What roles do space, rhythm, and affect play? What do images, sounds and voices show, and how do they produce meaning with and against each other (deixis)?

Concept and Organization: Maren Butte, Stéphane Montavon, Sabina Brandt, Tamar Tembeck