Voice Break
Voice Break is a durational performance piece in which trans-identifying singers attempt to break wine glasses using only their voice. Reflecting on the dangers of using one’s voice in an era where breath and sound are mediated by screens and masks, Voice Break explores the power of the untethered physicality of voice. Emanating from an individualized place of identity politics and expanding out into shared collective space, this work embodies the frustration and desire to speak out, speak up, and project one’s own voice. The work is further complicated by the physicality of the transitioning voice of singers who have taken on practices to bring their voices into resonance with their own identity.
In this single channel video with environmental sound, performers produce a vibrational tone in an attempt to break a glass. Resulting in a shatter—or even a shattering of expectation through an inability to break the glass—each performer makes attempts until they have exhausted their own will. The ongoing sounds of each performer might create moments of harmony and moments of dissonance, building a strong sonic and vibrational field of the collective voice. This work is performed without expectation or an assumed result, instead it welcomes the experiential and embodied individual to attempt and even struggle to negotiate the boundaries of their voice.
In our contemporary moment, the trans experience has become visible, but the barriers to success for trans people to move through their own experience while growing their careers or practices are still incredibly rigid. The trans body is one that contains a multitude of experiences, possibilities, and tones. Its fullest expression is one that is not hindered by categorizations built on the differences between bodies, and instead seeks to place value on the ways we can change or challenge the edges of what we perceive to be possible. Many artistic art forms, including singing, ask performers to identify their talents through their gender, in the case of singing they are grouped and trained by gendered vocal ranges: soprano for women and alto for men. The experience of negotiating one’s own gender identity is entirely different from that of sexuality and the ongoing lack of understanding around the trans experience proliferates both rejection and violence against the trans community.
Videography by Marcel Pardo Ariza.