FRANZISKA WINDISCH


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PERMEATING VOICES

Lecture performance, 30 min.
Audio Leakage Community at Critical Media Lab, Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW, 05.04.2023

The physical phenomenon of leaking can be understood as a process that is occurring when certain criteria are met, for example the permeability of a material or interface through which a fluid substance is able to pass through; a process is necessary for many systems and life-forms to sustain and to coexist. Used as a word though, the notion of leaking is employed often for the exact opposite: announcing a crisis, a disruption or pointing at the dysfunctionality of a system. As E. Manning asks “What if the skin were not a container? What if the skin were not a limit at which the self begins and ends?” leakage often problematizes the idea of (self-) containment that can lead to a re-interpretation of its boundaries. What are then the barriers through which permeating voices pass, which forms of containment do they escape? Reading Anne Carson, this performance lecture seeks to trace back the metaphorical origins of the figure of leakage. As active fluidity that transgresses boundaries, both physical and social, leakage has already been a rhetorical figure in Ancient Greek literature, used especially in relation to (female) voices and as a marker for difference or the non-rational.