False Relations

Practitioners: Alicia Karhunen Larsson, Love Andersson, Omer Keinan, Saga Ivéus Wenglert, Sigrid Sjöholm

Director: Robert Malmborg

Videographer: Ģirts Dubults

Witnesses: Leo Belaieff

Proposition: Robert initiated the session by inviting us to think about voice as relation: your voice and vocalization is always directed in relation to someone or something in the space.

Winter is Coming (squeaks, growls, and screams) / Robert Malmborg

Vocal Warm Up. Robert guided us through a vocal warm, noting that it’s especially important to prepare the vocal apparatus before playing with false chords. The warm up included:

• Walking around the space and stimulating yawning (to relax the vocal tract).

• Standing in a circle and playing with lip trills; adding pitch glides, going from low to high and vice versa.

• Going through the alphabet and repeating each phoneme on a set 4-beat rhythm (a… a… a… a… b… b… b… b… and so forth). We did this standing in a medium-wide stance with soft knees, sending the breath towards the abdomen and expanding sideways, attending to the contraction of the diaphragm [akin to “total respiration” in Grotowski].

• Party mode! Going again through the alphabet, adding a festive syncopation before the last beat, an easy sway and bounce to the standing, and a clearer sense of togetherness through eye contact.

• Huddled together, repeating “you and me and you and me and you and me and you” in a pitch see-saw / oscillation, attempting to find a collective pitch and then rising in pitch from repetition to repetition.

• Shifting through space, continuing with “you and me…” while playing with different vocal spatial-relation: internal voice / voice close to the body / voice filling the space and extending into the cosmos; voice directed towards a specific spot, surface, object / voice expanding nebulously.  

  
  

False Chords. Robert guided in locating the false chords; we stimulated coughing and clearing-one’s-throat to locate the particular contraction and resonance of the false chords. Robert then went around the room, guiding each practitioner with other propositions such as playing with vocal fry, growling, screaming, and so on.

As we were continued locating and playing with the false chords, we explored several fantastical character-voices: a mechanical cow, a troll, a goblin. As we did, we also began to intuitively move through various physical alignments and efforts to facilitate and modulate the sound.

We finished with moving freely through the room, trying out the various affordances of false chords (for example, a high-pitched scream, which made me think of the Earl of Lemongrab’s iconic, high-strung “unacceptable” from Adventure Time).

[After the session, I tried to specify the anatomy and resonance of the false chords. Anatomically, they rely on the vestibular folds (or false vocal cords), a thick mucous membrane situated just above the true folds, encasing them. In most European languages, these folds primarily support the laryngeal functions of breathing and of preventing food or drink from entering the airway during swallowing. Yet they can also be engaged to modulate phonation and resonance. When the false cords are activated, the voice tends to drop lower and the true folds contract, producing a range of textures. Resonance-wise, the laryngeal resonator becomes more clearly engaged. In my experience, the sensation of resonance is holistically amplified—most noticeably in the nose, chest, and soft palate.]

Unfolding

Opening. We began with an Opening (roughly 8 minutes), going on a personal experimentation with the material / body / world of the shared practice. Omer invited the group to consider how the shared practice can be articulated through each practitioner’s desires and curiosity. And, to play with the ways in which false chords can inform an appetite for movement and relating to the other practitioners. (Noting that over extending the voice through false chords can cause damage, we agreed to be playfully cautious.)

After the Opening, we shared some of the playthings we found:

• Different physical positions can create effort and release of voice

• Various alignments of the spine and pelvis can push and pull the voice

• The moment just before releasing sound / voice

• Inner singing vs a light expanding

• Singing to one’s collar-bone-ears

• Listening to the soundscape which emerges in the room

• Articulating the quality of lip-trills to a floppiness in the rest of the body

• Gentle, rhythmic motions which facilitate sounding

• Discovering new sounds / capacities of the vocal apparatus

• Arriving at various bodies / characters / references from the sound (and vice-versa)

[It seems that false-chords afforded a potent, joyful access to experimenting with the vocal apparatus. While dancers often express trepidation when approaching the voice, the whimsy and strong felt-sense of false chords generated a playful induction. In relation to the "playthings" above, false-chords allowed for an impressive range of explorations, playing with voice through movement, relation, and sensation in ways that are both intuitive and technical.]

DCTV. We had time for two DCTV sessions, roughly 6-minutes each. Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video is a practice-based research method developed by Ben Spatz (see: https://punctumbooks.com/titles/making-a-laboratory-dynamic-configurations-with-transversal-video/). To simplify, it organized three roles:

Practitioners: those who practice the practice in the practice space (here, the ccap studio), taking stewardship of a material (the false-chords practice shared by Robert).

Director: a practitioner, perhaps one who found a desire and curiosity they wish to pursue, who directs the practicing. Their directorship, generally speaking, can be thought of on a spectrum: relatively hands-off, holding the practicing through witnessing, perhaps with soft and reactive inputs such as playing music; hands-on, framing the practicing with a prior proposition, utilizing more direct inputs such as instructions, questions, tasks, and so on.

Videographer: a practitioner who videographically traces the knowledge that unfolded in the room. They too can be relatively active, shifting through the space and practitioners with the camera (phone), or relatively passive, placing the camera in one spot and adjusting the frame as needed.

(Witnesses: those who wish to witness the practicing, in this case from “outside” the practice space – delineated by their proximity to a wall.)