Electronic Voice Phenomena

Here’s the first question to ask Nathan Jones, compere of Electronic Voice Phenomena: When you say your event draws on the work of Konstantin Raudive, what does that actually mean? “Mostly what we are taking from him is this title,” he replies. “For us, the title works on two levels, at the point of the phenomenon of lots of artists using voice and technology in their work – and then the way that Dr Raudive was using it, as the name for a phenomenon where 'voices from beyond the grave' were heard in electronic noise.”

What makes this event distinctive? “Electronic Voice Phenomena presents artists who use and abuse the electronic interface as part of their performance making,” Jones says. “From finding a 'voice' in computational error, to distorting their own voices in the performance moment. It's only tangentially 'literature' in that it uses language as experimental form – more important is the newness of language in performance in relation to the internet, the 'overcoding' of the city, textual coercion, distortion.” It becomes clearer when you see the event itself – they’ll have online videos. “We are also really pleased to be working with several artists who play at the outer edges of literature and the arts more generally,” Jones says. These will include “theatre-writer, performer and film-maker Ross Sutherland, and New Contemporaries artist Sion Parkinson.”

To give a clearer version of what actually happens at one of these events, let’s ask about the last one. “Probably the most memorable thing about the last EVP show was Steven Fowler kickboxing with a contact mic inside his wrestling mask, followed immediately by this really intense and thought-provoking lyric poem by Ross Sutherland, on death, but using the visuals from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air as his 'form'.  It's a real combination of the visceral and cerebral, of the experimental and affecting.” Sounds like an understatement. All of this comes through Raudive’s theory, which is “fruitful territory for a poetic exploration, especially when you consider the way Raudive described these voices – as 'schizophrenic', fragmentary, and moving between languages – and how similar this is to a lot of contemporary avant garde writing/performance." This all does sound genuinely intriguing, and then some. “The main thing that I would say” Jones says, “ is people can expect the opportunity to feel involved in the creative moment as an audience – so many of these works use the performance as an opportunity for divining and producing new meanings and feeling from language”. [David Agnew]