weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 9
connect people and objects, and to form networks and interrelated webs.
The ‘thread’ is both the yarn and the voice, the paths that our bodies draw
when moving through spaces or the writing that the pen leaves on the
paper. The ‘thread’ can be a chain of childhood memories that emerges
consciously or unconsciously. Memories are carried by people who are
looking for a new home out of their own choice or compulsion, or people
who find themselves surrounded by a transforming environment which
seems to have lost its familiarity. The ‘thread’ can therefore be seen as
our belonging to places – either physical or imaginary – of important
life events or historical moments. Can we track, through the networks of
the thread, how these places, the geographical and built environments
constantly leave their imprints on our bodies? How do these places, from
our past or present, where we belong, guide our imagination and the ways
we connect to others?
Weaving Voices is also inspired by the potential reciprocity and uniqueness
that is inherent in the voice of each person.8 The voice that channels the
singularity of one’s body, the current physical, mental and emotional state,
but that can never be conceived as self-contained, as it fundamentally links
us to others:
“As if the voice were the very epitome of a society that we carry with us and
cannot get away from. We are social beings by the voice and through the voice; it
seems that the voice stands at the axis of our social bonds, and that voices are the
very texture of the social, as well as the intimate kernel of subjectivity.”9
Generally speaking, these two continuous ways of creation – the weaving
of colours and materials together, and the emergence of vocal textures
(or ‘sound carpets’)10 – can be considered as an analogous process that
unfolds through different but interconnected channels of expression.
Through imagination and curious attention in the project activities, our
team aims to connect tactile, visible, and audible manifestations as open
doors for personal encounters with others, as well as with our environment.
How do the atmosphere and soundscape of a busy city square (e.g. in
8 Cavarero, A. (2005) For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, pp. 173–182.
9 Dolar, M. (2006) A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, p. 14.
10 During the workshops that focused on vocal expression and listening, the project team often used this
term, which means a form of vocal improvisation in a group. If the improvisation is successful, the voices of the
individuals dynamically merge as if a powerful woven texture had been created.
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Leeds) or the churchyard of a small village (e.g. in Szalatnak) impact the
communal weaves? And how can we transform the visual patterns into
sound when we try to sing them? How does the creation by the hands
and the singing of polyphonic songs encourage each other and lead to
establishing social bonds?
This book is thus an attempt to put lived experience into words and
verbalise the nonverbal learnings of the innumerable rich moments of
the Weaving Voices workshops. It also means to capture the diversity
of experiences that individuals and groups representing different
performance and textile traditions have had over the seven workshop
weeks, the two community art residencies, several local encounters and
virtual meetings of the partners. All this comprises an experience that has
found life through the bodies, movements, voices, materials, and images of
a specific constellation of people in particular geographic contexts.
Reflections by the authors that make up the chapters in this book come in
a variety of writing registers. Some are highly informative or descriptive,
while others are rather personal or poetic, and others were shaped by
experimenting with the idea of ‘text as weaving’. All parts of this spectrum
are relevant and potentially give you, the reader, an insight into our artistic
as well as educational approaches and findings.
In the piece Extension of the Senses, Resonating Bodies and Spaces by
Walli Höfinger and Christiane Hommelsheim, two paths are drawn out and
intertwined along some resonant thoughts and philosophies. The artists
and voice teachers, who have been working in partnership for decades,
invite the reader to travel along the lines then stop for a moment and
through guided exercises, listen simply but carefully inwards and outwards
at the same time. Collective Composing as a Form of Musical Weaving,
the chapter collectively written by five members of the Soharóza choir
– Judit Biksz, Sarolta Eörsi, Dóra Halas, Vera Jónás and Endre Kertész –
gives an insight into the working method of the choir based on collective
composing, including examples of concrete improvisation exercises.
They also give an account of their work with the male community of the
rehabilitation centre in Komló. By respecting the rather strict daily rules
of this institute, they held a series of fruitful workshops, and with the
involvement of the project partners, the participatory work was eventually
composed into a theatre performance. More of the pieces in this book
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