Sounding The Voices

I recently read this, as told by Emmanuel Carrère: A little girl once said something in front of me that I just loved. She had misbehaved and her mother was scolding her, saying, “But put yourself in other people’s position!” And the little girl answered, “But if I put myself in their position, where do they go?”

What does it mean to express sincere feelings of difficult being in a challenging time? Who is heard and who is silenced (or simply not heard, which amounts to the same thing)? From where are you speaking? Who can you tell? What are you allowed to say? And, importantly, what will happen as a result of your speaking (out)? These and related questions have rarely been more pressing, or more widely (needing to be) voiced. That there is a crisis, that there are many in fact, does not mean it is a collective crisis, with the solidarity and mutual care that description suggests.

Sounding The Voices scores collaborative exchanges between six women with lived experience of challenging histories. A textured ‘poem’ of listening and learning, it proposes an accumulating ‘call and response’. How might we ‘sound’ the space between our pasts and presents, personally and collectively, to shape futures resisting complacency and despair, and in doing so, offering a 'being, otherwise'?

Voices: Andrea, Carrie, Mwiinga, Rachel, Therese, Umama

Conceived and directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Sound design by Graeme Miller

Still portraits by Sogand Bahram

Reflections follow, from trauma-sensitive practitioners Laura E. Fisher / www.traumascapes.org and Eirini Ampatzi Ippikoglou / www.eirini.co.uk.

Special thank you to Chris Erskine and Julie Tomlin; Gareth Evans and Ross Croockshank / www.hackneytherapycentre.com

supported by Necessity

• https://www.resonancefm.com/programmes/5...
• https://www.fugitiveimages.org.uk/projec...
• https://necessity.info/2022/01/12/soundi...