Cara Tolmie 50% seminar: Internal Singing as a Shared Practice

Discussant: Jule Flierl

Language: English

PhD-advisors: Katja Grillner and Cathy Lane

All Welcome!

Internal Singing is a vocal and performance practice that I have been exploring in different forms over the past years - using it as a material amongst other materials within various performances, sharing it as a workshop, using it as the basis to produce an album of music and presenting it as a research practice within the context of my PhD.

I have come to understand Internal Singing as a practice that explores a sensitive voice-body bind by investigating the relationship between sounding on both the inhale and exhale, vocal imaginaries and self administered touch that calms the body in states of illness and over-stimulation. For me, this is a multi-sensory listening exercise for the performer, characterised by circular vocal sound, slight movement and visible touch that attempts to displace vocality towards and through parts of the body extraneous to the mouth. As it builds up slowly through acute attention to breath, inclination, pleasure and circulation this practice attempts to prise open a space, ever-accessible. One that can be used to gather, improvise and examine what might emerge when acute sensitivity and tenderness are valued as skill.

During this seminar we will look into various explorations made over the past year whilst I was developing Internal Singing into a shareable practice for larger groups as well as plans for a more ambitious performance, based on Internal Singing, involving up to six performers.

Information on the discussant
Jule Flierl is a dance and voice artist from Berlin/Germany. She develops practices that conceive of the voice as a dancer, translating dance into the auditory realm. Her practice lives between experimental choreography and somatic singing methods, in which she develops scores to unsettle the relationship between seeing and hearing. She revives and continues the legacy of Valeska Gert, avant-garde dancer from 1920's Berlin, who first conceptualized the term SoundDance: to dance with one's voice. Currently she collaborates with fine artist Anna Zett, choreographer Antonia Baehr and SoundDance artist Irena Z. Tomazin.