Deaf voices / Deaf art: Vocality through and beyond sound and sign1

Abstract

Do we have a voice if we don’t speak a language? How does the voice of a sign language look like? What do we learn about vocality when we turn our ears and eyes towards deaf voices and the sign languages of the deaf? How can you make others hear the voice of a ‘silent’ minority? And what about ventriloquism, vocal interiority and acousmatic voice in the case of the deaf? By focusing mainly on the ways of the deaf with voice, especially as they materialize in the work of deaf artists using sound as the main material of their art-making, in this article I approach the significance of deaf vocalities for a wider understanding and experience of sound and voice for both the deaf and the hearing. The work of deaf artists working with sound and voice is an acoustic, vibratory, interpretive and activist lens through which we can get parallax views of our common assumptions about the vocal and listen to modulated renderings of our common conceptions of vocality. Through their investigations of the vocal and the sonic, deaf artists explore the deep roots of the metaphorical and symbolic valence of the vocal trope, while they steadily argue for alternative voices, non-acoustic, vibrational sonorities, through sign, motion, space, contact. Their experimental works unravel the experiential, metaphorical and theoretical facets of voice and sound, while they also project vocality onto other modes of communication and sociality, mainly sign and embodied ways of physical movement, thus extending the notion of voice to include sign languages and non-vocal communication. Deaf voices reveal a whole new field of questions on voice and agency, through and beyond sound and sign.