Selfportrait for six voices and a city

Abstract

Dirty Ear Report #3 documents a collective workshop by sound artists and researchers working in the fields of experimental dramaturgy, sonic social engagement, and voice studies. Representing the sixth in the series of the Dirty Ear Forum held in Lisbon in 2016, the Report brings together essays, text pieces, and documents from the participants. In particular, questions of affect and urban experience are considered, posing sound as a vehicle for generating performative cartographies. "Selfportrait for six voices and a city" is a reflection on the notes taken by the six of us who participated in the forum as we listened to each other. As listeners, we select and differentiate words and expressions that we collect in a notebook or on single sheets of paper. From that moment, the written words remain forever separated from the voice and the discourse. Conversely, these same words written preserve the connection to some remembrance of the bodies talking and transferring emotions, and emphasis on the facts voiced. The words extracted from a discourse, and collected together, create a personification of the self through the others; at the same time, these words, gathered in the space of a notebook, provoke a crossed line of your self and the self of others. During the five days of working in the Dirty Ear Forum in Lisbon, I wrote sixteen pages of notes. I did it while listening to others talk. And I did it in two specific places in the city: within an art gallery in the heart of the city, and in a room of a Baroque palace. Both places affected the way in which I listened. Both places affected me in how I listened to the others. This is a self-portrait written for six voices and a city.