Lyrics not Available. Listening to Voice in Peter Ablinger’s ‘The Real as Imaginary’

Abstract

In a video on Youtube, Peter Ablinger can be seen and heard performing his 2012 piece The Real as Imaginary (Das Wirkliche als Vorgestelltes). Loud static noise greatly complicates our understanding of a text being recited. In the interview following this performance, Ablinger says that ‘one often has to take something away in order to achieve something new’. What then, does the listener get in return? This paper frames The Real as Imaginary within a general interest in the voice itself, outside of its intimate connection with meaning, where it appears as a sign for something or someone else. Drawing on the work of Mladen Dolar and others, it is argued that this notion of voice as voice is far from self-evident as its relationship with meaning extends well beyond speech. Subsequently, the work of Jean-Luc Nancy serves as a theoretical basis to reformulate this quest for voice as a search for a proper listening, a mode of attending to our aural surroundings generally suppressed in interpretation. The paper suggests that it is precisely within the obstruction of the latter that the possibility of the former is opened up: a process reflected in the twofold functioning of The Real as Imaginary’s noise as both a wall (obstructing understanding) and a window (inviting listening). Indeed, Ablinger’s work is said to make use of noise’s disruptive potential in order to breach the automatic circuit between vocal expression and interpretation, drawing us towards the voice’s highly elusive sonic presence.