Karslruhe. The apparent paradox of wanting to integrate the acoustic medium of the human voice into the visual context of a large, complex exhibition can at first be read in connection with other recent projects that have focused on the representations and artistic renderings of sounds and acoustic phenomena. This kind of horizontal approach to the theme of the exhibition »Phonorama« is forced into different conceptual fields via a number of channels in works by Tony Oursler, Judith Barry, Pierre Huyghe, Asta Gröting, Dieter Roth and Marcel Broodthaers. At the same time, this display at the ZKM, which brings together an abundance of material, contrasts strongly with such modern cross sections owing to the expansion of its historical navigational scope, with deep boreholes going back to complex areas of Central European society in the 18th century. It spreads out its network of pathways to embrace important nexus in the history of media and their social connotations.

Within such a presentational framework, it seems natural that an installation made up of collaged original sound should zoom back to the early days of radio in acoustically evocative manner. For the consequences of the media coup that occurred in late autumn of 1923, when human words broadcast onto the ether from the loft of the Vox record company in Berlin could be heard outside on the first radio detectors, can well be compared with the implications of the euphorically received introduction of the World Wide Web seventy years later.
But it was not only the opening up of new information channels that changed the world when radio – an invention created as a kind of by-product of the First World War – rapidly began to become established in civilian life. As is demonstrated by one of the exhibition's central lines of argument, the human voice, as an anthropologically primary medium, also went through a process of increasing deterritorialization as a result of technical experiments and mechanical innovations. This could be directly experienced by the rapidly growing throng of radio listeners in the 1920s: the broadcasting range of the stations increased, while the voices being broadcast still seemed to be in direct proximity, irrespective of the place of reception. Fascinated contemporaries described this as a modern »miracle«, but also felt some scepticism in view of the way the apparatuses massively infringed on one's privacy.

This new everyday experience was the expression of a turning point in media history similar to the one already triggered by the distribution, starting in July 1888, of the first speaking machine, the phonograph, from the workshop of Thomas Alva Edison. With the emergence of the new technologies, the presence of the voice, which the philosopher Jacques Derrida described, in his »Of Grammatology« (1967), as the embodiment of presence and meaning that could be situated closest to the signified, had become easy to store, accessible wherever desired and constantly available owing to its omnipresence in the ether.
The cultural studies expert and curator Brigitte Felderer found the central point of departure for exploring the complex network of relationships incorporated by »Phonorama« in the course of her long study of the genesis of 18th-century mechanical arts. Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), an official at the court of Maria Theresa who was influenced by the ideas of Freemasonry and implemented some important administrative reforms, achieved some prominence as a leading figure in the discourse of the Enlightenment from his socially elite position owing to the voice. In the course of his scientific experiments, Kempelen constructed a speaking machine that, on its numerous demonstration tours, was by no means seen as a mere fairground sensation, but as the serious project of a scholar. The aim of Kempelen's research, which was to establish a valid model to explain the function of the speech organs, finally led to the dislocation of the voice as a phenomenon. For this reason, the haptic/visual implementations at »Phonorama« also include original showpieces like a rather puzzling speaking machine from 1790 and phonographs of sophisticated design.

Despite the programmatic subtitle of the project, this exhibition by no means consists in the presentation of a graded sequence or apparent historical causal connections. Instead, a multi-media network made up of individual, loosely connected thematic zones was installed in the area covered by two of the ZKM's air shafts. The display dispenses with the didactic approach of traditional culturo-historical overview exhibitions and allows several approaches – of various geographic positionings – to thematic magnetic fields, which in the catalogue are given titles such as »Politische Sprechakte« (Political Acts of Speech), »Sprechfunk mit Verstorbenen« (Radio Contact with the Dead) or »Koloniale Phonographie« (Colonial Phonography). What is unusual is the sensitive acoustic presentation in the rooms, which are barely amenable to any architectural sub-division. This is the work of the Linz-born electronics expert and composer Fadi Dorninger. He programmed infra-red control elements that fade in the sound of the various video installations only when viewers approach them, which reinforces the concentration of experiences in places.

Three main leitmotifs pervade the historiographically organized framework. On the surface, the focus is on a selected part of the history of media, ranging from the mechanization of voice production and phonographic recordings carried out by missionaries and linguists in African societies to complicated media transferrals, such as an installation by VALIE EXPORT with the title »Was für eine seltsame Maschine« (What a Strange Machine) (2004). Here, a red laser ray writes the transcribed sounds produced by a »glossolalating« voice onto the surface of a sump. After a tour of the widely differing visual forms of expression at the exhibition, the fragility of this work makes this seem like tipping the whole theme back into the sphere of the immaterial.

The selection of the art works allows a second main theme to be discerned, one that can be described as an almost subversive »undermining of the voice with the medium of the voice itself«. A documented action by the French situationist Gil J. Wolman provides a paradigmatic exemplification. By alienating normal vocal technique, Wolman prevented himself from producing any conventional articulation in order to develop a type of poetry from speech itself. Works by Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys and Mauricio Kagel also connect in here. In the video work by Pierre Huyghes with the title »One Million Kingdoms«, on the other hand, a girl strolls through a fairy-tale landscape whose curves are produced by the oscillations of her own voice. This can be seen as a media feedback on the interpretation of the voice as the first medium that hurries on ahead of the other –symbolic – systems of signs. This déja-vu-like selection of individual works contains few surprises, but rather some precisely chosen re-encounters. However, this restriction seems to result from the need to limit this almost boundless theme.

This thematic pathway is complemented and mirrored by the third leitmotivic thread, which – influenced not least by the ideas of Wolfgang von Kempelen – can be seen to run through the project as a progressive impetus. In the various situations, »the voice« [Ger: Stimme], together with all its conceptual connotations such as »Stimmrecht« (right to vote), »Stimmzettel« (ballot paper) and »Abstimmung« (vote), recurs as the consitutive medium of democratic order and its opposite. The section »Politische Sprechakte« shows not only announcements and leaflets from the year of revolution in 1848 and documentary material from the Nazi period, but also the video documentation of a performance by Marina Abramovic at a meeting in the student cultural centre in Belgrade in 1976. The presentation of the archive from the estate of the Swedish taped-voice researcher Friedrich Jürgenson and his attempts to contact the dead via magnetophone must also be mentioned. The archive is administrated and looked after by the electronic musician and curator Carl Michael as part of an eccentric history of science.
At the same time, a historico-cultural project like »Phonorama« raises the question of to what extent its enormous scope leads to a purely phenomenological perception. In the final analysis, however, it becomes apparent that established codes are called into question here by different contextualizations of the concept of the voice, something that already had its roots in Wolfgang von Kempelen's attempts to detach the voice from the body.

»Phonorama – A Cultural History of the Voice as a Medium«
ZKM, Karlsruhe, 19 September 2004 to 30 January 2005

 

 

---