Kunstverein Munich present La voix humaine on view 25 January–30 March 2014 .
The exhibition La voix humaine at Kunstverein Munich features works by artists that offer contemporary perspectives on themes within Francis Poulenc’s 1958 operatic adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s one-act play of the same name. In this libretto, a woman pleads with her ex-lover over a phone in a conversation constantly interrupted by a bad connection. The voice on the other end of the line however remains inaudible throughout, leaving the woman to appear as if she is conversing with herself. In particular, the exhibition takes this technically mediated aspect of the drama to explore how heightened forms of affect are shaped by today’s media-saturated society; from public exposure of emotionality in need of an audience to a consequential role technology plays in facilitating intimate relationships, ultimately bringing human subjectivity into a direct correlation between user and interface.
Two new commissions in La voix humaine amplify the delivery of emotion through different modes of address. The individually hand-drawn pages that make up Amelie von Wulffen’s phantasmagorical comic strip At the cool table—in which the artist parodies the anxieties of a mid-career female artist of the ‘old school’ in a new world of high-velocity performance, professionalism, connectivity and sexual escapism—are roughly illustrated to approximate the direct form of speech. Cally Spooner on the other hand has rehearsed several monologues together with opera singers in Munich using the operatic style of recitative for her performance Damning Evidence Illicit Behaviour Seemingly Insurmountable Great Sadness Terminated In Any Manner. Rather than using classical scores however, Spooner’s libretto is sourced from the brute language of online comment threads.
Existing and adapted pieces by Tyler Coburn, Cécile B. Evans, Erica Scourti and Frances Stark meanwhile enquire into the dependent relationship between affect and Web 2.0 user-generated content and interfaces, such as voice recognition programs, social media and online advertising. As such, these works make a feature of how far a user is assimilated and mediated by technical and commercial conditions; stretched to points where technology flattens emotion, corrects speech, and is able to create responsive online personas.
Kunstverein Munich
Galeriestraße 4
80539 Munich