Cara Tolmie 90% Seminar – Internal Singing: Sensitive listening through vocalbody disorientation

Respondent: Imri Sandström

Language: English

Supervisors: Mathew Gregory, Katja Grillner and Malin Arnell

Please email to register in advance: mathew.gregory@konstfack.se

Welcome to the 90% seminar of Cara Tolmie’s documented artistic research project Internal Singing: Sensitive listening through vocalbody disorientation. This seminar will discuss a draft of Cara’s thesis project that takes the form of an online exposition on Research Catalogue containing video, audio, images, performance documentation and text.

This documented artistic research project is an articulation, through multimodal forms, of a voice-body method called Internal Singing that Cara has been developing since 2018. Internal Singing is a method that has come into being through a state of amplified sensitivity within her own body. This condition was triggered by a succession of five concussions (mild traumatic brain injuries) over seven years (2016-2023), and an eventual diagnosis of post concussion syndrome (PCS). Internal Singing has been a way for Cara, as an artist working predominantly with sound and and performance, to traverse and inspect her own bodily terrain (both sensed and imagined) over this time in order to sensitively re-learn an injured body replete with unknowns. It has been the main method she has developed throughout the research and has been enacted through regular practice, performances, soundworks, collaboration, installation, writing, pedagogy and discussion.

Within this documented artistic research project, Internal Singing researches the disorientating effects of post concussion syndrome in relation to the voice-body bind and allows materials and rhythms to come into focus through listening to and with both Cara’s own voice and body and the voices and bodies of others. Over this time, Internal Singing has enabled her to hold open a space between study (practice and repetition) and surrender (following) whilst listening to (attending towards) a nebulous and unruly reality due to a non-consensual state of chronic illness. Throughout the thesis, Internal Singing is presented as a wayfinding method and explores what qualities emerging from this heightened state of sensitivity open opportunities for insight, transformation, feeling and sensation for both the vocalist and the listener. Across these investigations the project at large aims to uncover artistic strategies that allow for more sensitive, complex and potentially disorienting voice-body relationships to come to light whilst listening through a particular bodily state.

Please note that the full draft of this thesis project will only be made available to the respondent. An abridged version of the introduction and some documentation will be available on request, please contact Mathew Gregory if you would like to receive this material: mathew.gregory@konstfack.se.