Vibrant Echoes: A Material Semiotics of the Voice in Music by Iris Garrelfs and Marlo Eggplant

Abstract

This article explores the materiality of the voice outside of the body in two performances by Iris Garrelfs and Marlo Eggplant. It considers, beyond the body and beyond text, how the voice might be addressed as material in and of itself. In this consideration, the voice is not only a means of delivering text or creating sound in performance, and nor is it (only) expressive of the body: rather, its material and spatial dimensions can be located in physical space and outside of the body. Through this approach, Echo is not understood through her lack of a material body or vocal agency, but as the agentive aspect of the voice that is already vibrant—as described by Jane Bennett—and material-discursive—as described by Karen Barad. Using John Law’s considerations of materiality, heterogeneity, semiotic relationality, process and its precarity, and space and scale within Actor Network Theory, I consider how the materialism of the voice can be mapped as/to a network of interrelations in both real and imagined spaces. This network is explored in contemporary experimental performances that employ the voice as material: Lauschen (2016/18) by Iris Garrelfs, for voice and listening cones, and Marlo Eggplant’s September 2018 performance for voice and electronics at the Fortprocess festival. Through these works, I describe the material agency of the voice as a ‘vibrant echo’.