the voice as performance, act and body

At the 2007 Venice Biennale, I did a 12-minute performance in the Arsenale that showed the vocal folds of my throat while I was speaking. It was called the voice as performance, act and body. After a camera was inserted through my nose, the image was shown on large monitors so that you could see my vocal folds in the process of speaking. It was my own text that I read in German, a poetic text about the origin of language. “What is the anatomy of language?” I asked. My answer was just as much a body performance as any of my earlier works. Whenever we think of the body as a vessel for artistic ideas, we somehow always focus on the surface of the body. But the truth is that there is no surface of the body independent of its interior. It’s obvious that the outside of the body is always connected to the inside, to thought processes and to an internal anatomy. (VALIE EXPORT)


Please see also „i turn over the pictures of my voice in my head“ (2008)