Vocal Behaviour

The project Vocal Behaviour began after the reading of Michał Libera’s essay Counter-Eavesdropping*, and personal experiences of living in a block of flats, where sound, traveling through architectural divisions, was blurring the boundaries between the private and the common, between hearing and listening.

The installation is dedicated to experiencing the human voice both as a timbre, and as a carrier of information. Thinking about contexts, regulations, and dependencies emerging in social system, I focus on shifts in interpersonal communication — what evolves in silence, remains unspoken or unasked. A subtle sonic structure consists of unvoiced sounds and verbal messages. It includes classifications of terms such as „whisper” and „shout”, understood as timbres, social gestures, and conscious decisions. Spoken in Polish, the definitions are accompanied by audio snippets containing recognizable sounds of verbal communication. These information excerpts encourage more attentive listening, eavesdropping, to capture messages amidst the fragmented timbre.

*Counter-Eavesdropping (2012) — an essay by Michał Libera published in the book: Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers.

**The Nedomov / UNHOME exhibition was organized by MyMamy and Wave cultural centre for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.

set:
2023 — Krajská galéria v Prešove — as a part of the Nedomov / UNHOME** group exhibition curated by Eduard Klena

photo:
Marek Rohal