VOICE:over - La Voix humaine

With interdisciplinary exhibition projects, performances, an opera installation and a diverse discourse program, the series VOICE:over at Galerie Nord| Kunstverein Tiergarten presents various phenomena of the voice. The projects negotiate the spectrum of the voice as a medium within the medium itself – considering scream as well as speaking or singing.

The third project in the programme series, La Voix humaine, is a mono opera by French composer Francis Poulenc, adapted from a play by Jean Cocteau (1930), deals, for the first time in opera literature, with decoupling the human voice from the spatial reference system of singers and listeners.

What do we hear? The reality of voices, the resonance of words, the meaning of what is said? Moreover, for the first time in opera literature, this work introduces the decoupling of the human voice form the body and from the spatial reference system. In the course of the monologue the woman begins to perceive the telephone, which she at the same time implores, as a ‘terrible weapon’ and blames it for the futility of her efforts. A telephone mutates into a person and an echoless voice despairs of a universal absence – there is only silence, the apparatus remains mute. Hello, are you there? There is no answer.

Performances
Thu, 11 August, 7:30 pm
Sat, 13 August, 7:30 pm
Sun, 14 August, 6:00 pm

Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten
Turmstraße 75, 10551 Berlin
Opening hours: Tue-Sat 12h to 19 h  
free entry

www.website.kunstverein-tiergarten.de