sempozyum_bildiri_kitabi

dominant and often repetitive, clichéd, visual images; not to replace sound but, to ‘offer sites of
indeterminacy, as Leslie Morris points out…
Thus my call for a turn to the aural is not a call for a move away from the visual;
rather, by exploring the repetition of sound and the echo of memory in texts (poetic,
filmic, visual) we can find, in theinterstices between sight and sound, additional layers in
the production and creation of memory. 6
Memory signals an affective link to the past and a sense of an embodied ‘living connection.’
Singing Letters explores such a form of social memory and is an example of such connectivity ‘in
action.’ By surpassing the inscribed and conscious, the piece draws on the way popular (folk) songs
continue to be a way for people to make their own records which, passed from generation to
generation, orally and through memory, form an integral, ephemeral aspect of identity and connect
to wider historical discourse. The voice always simultaneously exists inside and outside of the body,
and its immateriality weights just as strongly as its social and political import. What is more, the voice
is not only a tool of articulation but is always associated with action; for example, it can name things
and give commands. The female singer ‘performs’ the letters in a style that is associated with
religious ‘plain chant’, popular in Irish church singing throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The point of
this exercise was twofold, (a) the mono tonal effect of this mode of singing is at odds with the often
passionate content of the letters, suggesting some kind of conflict between inner and outer worlds,
and (b) the association with the Irish catholic church of the 1950s suggests how religious, social and
cultural memories can be transferred and maintained – a concept that Halbwachs maintains is where
individual memories are constantly and implicitly attached to the broader community.
In summary Singing Letters explores the many ways in which collective memory circulates in
society. Singing Letters draws investigates the power and affective nature of the human voice as a
memory trace that has the potential to reach beyond the individual and personal and into the social
and cultural arena. By employing sculptural process, sound and the human, female singing voice I set
out to appropriate the original texts – primarily by switching gender and reconfiguring the tactile,
materiality of text into the immateriality, expansive and illusive nature of song in order to disrupt the
role of the patriarchal, authoritative voice in more traditional archival processes. Such artistic
interventions open up imaginative possibilities to rethink the potential of sound as a conceptual tool
to explore the circulation of memory.
The artwork Radiogram investigates the idea of creating 'alternative social transmissions' and
further explores the idea of ‘sound memory’ in the context of collective or social memory, this time
in the form of a state of the art 1960s home entertainment system that comprises of a vinyl record
player and radio transmitter.