Untuning is an experimental vocal performance and sound installation that explores my ongoing, precarious process of decolonising the voice.
The work interrogates the colonial legacies embedded in Western musical epistemologies such as pitch hierarchy, noise suppression, disembodied virtuosity, and reclaims subaltern vocalities through childlike experimentation with unorganised sounds and ‘noises’.
The work interrogates the colonial legacies embedded in Western musical epistemologies such as pitch hierarchy, noise suppression, disembodied virtuosity, and reclaims subaltern vocalities through childlike experimentation with unorganised sounds and ‘noises’.
In Untuning, I explore my own process of destabilisation of binary categorisations of musicality (e.g, music/noise, in tune/out of tune, body/mind, human/nature) to meet the human voice in its in-betweenness and contradiction. By resituating the voice within my own body and ancestral land, I reconnect with timbres, dialects, and affective resonances of Southern Italian oral traditions, reclaiming homeplace as a site of epistemic resistance. The sound installation features layered vocal experimentations within ‘non-musical’ sonorities, amplified and spatialised across the gallery. The performance unfolds as a ritual of unlearning: I play with my voice as a child would, allowing my voice to resonate and dissonate into new territories, within the framework of performance as research.
methodology: autoethnographic performance; vocal experimentation; sound installation.