The exhibition Freeing the Voices begins with one voice, the scream of Marina Abramović—that is to say, one human being that grows throughout the exhibition into a multitude of mainly human voices, and ends with the voice of the midge in the work of Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec. We do not hear the voice of the midge with our ears, its presence is in our radical listening. Listening is not the same as hearing—its specificity lies in our attention and awareness of ourselves and others, human and non-human beings and things. But just as the voice expresses us and at the same time the Other, so listening implies care and attention to others—and yet also implies obedience to authority.
Why is an exhibition about the voice so important today?
For at least two reasons. Firstly, it is our last chance to get in tune with the world; and secondly, today, in times of multiple crisis, we need to learn how to act differently.
At a time when we have lost our society of solidarity and are no longer bound together by a common goal, our voice can become a tool to connect us. The rhythmised voice, the voice that is in tune with the movement of our bodies, takes on a ritual character in poetry and in singing. Predictable rhythmic sequences soothe our bodies and make our relation to the world more stable while connecting us to other people, the environment and the universe.
While our identities are being turned into digital codes and our language into an algorithm, our voice seems to make us present, to give our bodies and our words back the power to become flesh, to act in this world. To do this, we need to learn once again how to breathe, how to shout and how to speak. We are tired of new theories and proliferating neologisms that do nothing to help us find a way out of the accumulated crises and delusions of humanity. To get back on our feet, to face the torments and atrocities around us as responsible witnesses, we need to equip ourselves with different knowledge and different ways of acting.
And it is time for action, even if it is as inarticulate as shouting or murmuring. It is no longer enough to conclude that we do not speak with our own voice, that behind it there is always the voice of the master. We need to break a culture of silence that has taken hold around us, where the space for free speech is shrinking and there are growing calls for a culture of cancellation. But this silencing, this censorship, is not the only means of control, because we are subjected to a noise of information that overwhelms us even more.
Although there is no such thing as our own authentic voice, the liberation of our individual and collective voice is the horizon of the works exhibited. It is important to say here that liberating our voices does not mean finding a self-hood with which our voice corresponds perfectly. What we really liberate with the voice is our relationship to the world. The artworks in this exhibition attempt to decolonise the different voices of particular traditions, nations and their communities and landscapes, the voices of women, people of colour, people from the edges of Europe, and the voices of our individual bodies.
The works in this show also raise awareness of the crisis of modernity and its rational constructs. Their language transcends universal concepts and embodies particular experiences and knowledge. At the same time, they do not reject modernity and its avant-garde tradition, because they are aware that they are its heirs, having grown up in the conflicting field of its integration into dominant narratives and dominant ideologies. A voice is always a particular voice. The works in this exhibition teach us how to listen differently, to recognise vibrations, signs and even the voice of silence.
The voices for our exhibition are grounded and embodied, addressing the world from specific local and social positions, from the margins of the rich world and the world of established values and knowledge. This said, it must be stressed that these are not essentialist voices, but voices informed by the experience of art and in engaged relation with the topology of its institution. Freeing our voices is not about returning to something we may have lost, because our voices were never really free—it is about becoming as aware as possible of our relationship to the reality we live in, and deciding which direction we need to move in.