⭒elif gülin soğuksu ⭒










SPEAKING THR-O-UGH
2021
video documentary of the intervention
Elif Gülin Soğuksu (Istanbul), Mariana Carvalho (Berlin)
and Nirah Pomar (Florianópolis)
Mentorship by Laura Mello
Online Residency for both *Topia and SomaRumor II festivals
July to October, 2021.
SPEAKING THR-O-UGH is an intervention happening in three different cities in three different continents: Berlin (DE), Florianópolis (BR) and Istanbul (TR). Three female artists, one in every place, go to a predetermined location in public space and focuses on the presence of womxn (AFAB, transgender, transfeminine, transmasculine, intersex [+gender optional], genderqueer, gender nonconforming, a- gender and/or non-binary) in public space. Three female artists, one in every place, go to a predetermined location. Each of them wears a speaker covering her mouth, pointing outwards. The speakers play collected voices of womxn answering a previous open call with the question “what do you want to put out?”. As interfaces, the performers give body to the responses, sounding the collected voices in the different environments.
The performance seeks to make womxn’s voices audible, those that have often been historically silenced and oppressed. Our intention is to expose in public space what is often kept inside, unspoken, repressed, un-shouted, unmentionable, indigestible. Thoughts, feelings, words, laughs or screaming, vomits or other unnamed uncanny intensities. Verbal or not, a voice carries a body and a whole world.
With speakers in our mouths - this very social and powerful chamber - we will act as interfaces, ventriloquistically giving body to the bodies of the voices that will appear. Re-bodying, release, externalization and provocation: it will be an experiment in the three different cities, documenting how each of them will react - or listen to those voices.
This work has been developed in the scope of the *Topia Residency Program, in cooperation with Somarumor II – Latin American Sound Art Meeting, under the tutorship of Laura Mello.
THANKS TO
every wom*n that sent us an audio file, and those who shared our open call.Carmen Pomar, Laura Mello, Marcos Pomar, Mitchell Keaney, and Deniz Yılmaz, Berk Uslu, Ercan Bektaş Ülger, for the help with the cameras and recordings.
Albert Paul, for the support with the technical setup
Georg Klein, Liang Yun-Chu, Kayla Elrod, Samuel Perea-Díaz, Awu, Dillon Bastan, Tornike Margvelashvili, Samantha Simmons and Sound Studies and Sonic Arts department at the Universität der Künste
and
Laura Mello


video documentary
Soundcloud page with voice notes about the process and the tracks used in the performance, made with the collected voices.
RESIDENCY* PRESENTATION
Streaming of the work speaking thr-o-ugh, and talk with the resident artists Mariana Carvalho, Nirah Pomar and Elif Gülin Soğuksu.


SPEAKING THR-O-UGH // *TOPIA EXHIBITION
Cloudtopia Exhibition at Errant Sound project space
18th – 21th / 25th – 28th November
2021 / Berlin
video documentary and process items
2021






photo credits: Mariana Carvalho
image collages: Elif Gülin Soğuksu