Lecture by the philosopher, cultural theorist and film critic Mladen Dolar in conjunction with the exhibition 'Mother’s Day' by Smadar Dreyfus.
Followed by a conversation between Mladen Dolar and Smadar Dreyfus, moderated by Anselm Franke.

Departing from the voice as an object, the most common object there is and at the same time the most enigmatic when we try to pin it down”, the lecture by Mladen Dolar (Maribor, 1951) takes us on a journey through the paradoxes of the voice, passing through different historical moments in literature, film and visual arts. Dolar will propose a reading of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, take Samuel Beckett as exemplary of the advent of the modern voice and will examine the role of the voice in new artistic practices, taking up examples from the work of Valie Export and Smadar Dreyfus.

In the lecture we follow the various steps in his research on the voice and its role throughout the centuries: the notion of the acousmatic voice, it’s philosophical origins, its problematic relation to the body, the voice as the disruption of presence and of the traditional divide into the interior and the exterior. The last part examines the future of the voice in the age of mechanical and digital reproduction.

Language English