IASPM-Canada Article Prize Winner - 2022

Article Prize Winner: “Voicing the Clone: Laurie Anderson and Technologies of Reproduction” by Maria Murphy

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Maria Murphy expertly probes the materiality of the voice as it mediates questions of corporeality and technofuturity. The article close-reads a performance by Laurie Anderson––whose immense contributions to popular music, gender and technology remain under-explored––and considers the performance’s relation to rapidly evolving possibilities in reproductive technologies. Murphy’s sound studies approach is refreshing, sidestepping traditional feminist analytical approaches to drag. Murphy maps out how sound studies might borrow from new directions in queer and trans studies to problematize the limits of the body. The article is incredibly timely of great importance given the uncertain future which lay ahead for reproductive rights and trans existence, tying the two together while meditating on bodily autonomy and capital.

Gagnant.e.s du prix d’article : Maria Murphy, « Voicing the Clone: Laurie Anderson and Technologies of Reproduction ».

Maria Murphy examine habilement la matérialité de la voix alors qu’elle arbitre des questions de corporalité et de techno-futurisme. Son article offre une analyse attentive d’une performance par Laurie Anderson – dont les contributions immenses à la musique populaire, au sexe et à la technologie demeurent un sujet sous-étudié – et considère la relation entre cette performance et les possibilités en reproduction technologique en évolution rapide. L’approche en sound studies qu’emploie Murphy est rafraîchissante, et contourne les approches analytiques féministes typiquement utilisés dans les études du drag. Murphy trace la manière dont les sound studies peuvent emprunter à de nouvelles directions en étude queer et trans afin de problématiser les limites du corps. Cet article est particulièrement opportun et d’une très grande importance considérant le futur incertain qui attend les droits de santé reproductive et l’existence trans, rattachant les deux tout en méditant sur l’autonomie corporelle et le capital.

Maria Murphy est la directrice adjointe à Penn’s Center for Research in Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies (centre de recherche pour les études féministes, queer, et transgenre). Son travail de recherche porte sur les liens entre les technologies musicales et les politiques du corps à travers les performances artistiques multimédia, l’expérimentalisme Américain, ainsi que l’activisme esthétique des 20ième et 21ème siècles. Elle travaille présentement sur son livre Bio-Pop : Laurie Anderson, Technobodies, and Aesthetic Activism, qui examine les interventions performatives, soniques, et technologiques des performances artistique multimédia de Laurie Anderson et démontre de quelle façon son activisme esthétique réinterprète de manière critique les façons par lesquelles les médias, les technologies, et les corps sont conçus et classés au sein d’institutions gouvernementales, d’organisations de santé publiques, ainsi que le sensorium populaire aux États-Unis. Maria est aussi intéressée par le développement d’espaces créatifs visant à la recherche pratique. Elle est la co-fondatrice, avec Roksana Filipowska, de Listening (to) Cyborgs : A Media Archaeology Workshop on Sound Technologies (listeningtocyborgs.com) et est l’animatrice du podcast du centre FQT Gender Jawn. Son travail se retrouve sur www.mariaelainemurphy.com.

Screening Event: Hungers (1988)
Hungers
Ed Emshwiller, US, 1988, 29 min., color

The sprawling, multidisciplinary theatrical production Hungers was performed at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria as well as the Los Angeles Arts Festival in 1987. Featuring film, video, and computer generated images along with dance and electronic and acoustic music and voice. It was produced as a collaboration between Emshwiller and composer Morton Subotnick, featuring Joan La Barbara. Emshwiller described the work as “an orchestrated tapestry of images and music with words spoken and sung which express hungers (i.e. for food, security, acceptance, the child for mother).” This broadcast version, created for PBS, is a glimpse of the full performance from the stage to behind the scenes.

This screening will include a conversation with Ted Gordon, Joan LaBarbara, Maria Murphy, and Morton Subotnick, followed by a post-screening closing reception.

Exhibit: Hotline
SPACE Gallery, Portland, Maine

SPACE is pleased to present HOTLINE, an interactive group show featuring soundworks by artists, musicians, scholars, performers and poets.

As the name suggests, the exhibition features eight listening stations where visitors can hear songs, artworks and readings on custom-built payphones designed by Smooth Technology, a New York City-based team of artist engineers. Each payphone is programmed with a distinct set of recordings that automatically play when the hook switch is released for a choose-your-own-audio-adventure experience. No two listening stations are alike.

The works in HOTLINE range from the fancifully dulcet and intellectually stimulating to funkier versions of hold music and hard-to-listen-to noise. A limited edition vinyl record printed at the conclusion of the exhibition will serve as an archive and commemorative object for the project. Performances by featured artists are scheduled throughout the run of the exhibition.

Performance: Blowback
Incubation Series, Institute of Contemporary Art

UPenn MFA candidates Austin Fisher, Zach Hill, and Danielle Kovalski Monsonego present Blowback, a performance utilizing a trained singer in a sculptural costume whose voice is amplified and enacted through an industrial fan and public address system. Voice and language are stretched into an exaggeratedly physical spatial experience that activate set and costume. The performance will take place on ICA’s Tuttleman Terrace.

Performance: “Watch Me Daddy”
February Scratch Night, FringeArts

Philly’s most talented artists perform new material from shows they are working on in this fast-paced sampling of contemporary theater, dance, performance art, and everything in between. Scratch Night is hosted and curated by a different artist each month, and features four to six short performances by local companies and artists, offering an inside look at the future of performance.

This month’s Scratch Night, hosted by Eugene Lew, will feature works in progress by Shani Aviram, Maria Murphy, James Sprang, Clint Takeda, Will Owen, and Taji Nahl.

Performance: Crossing Borders
Biello Martin Studio

Crossing Borders – an evening of musical theater, art song, and electronic music at the magical Biello Martin Studio in Old City. Centered on the theme of compassion - performers include renowned Canadian soprano Maureen Batt, musicologist Maria Murphy, and composer Dan Martin performing a cycle of rarely heard AIDs era songs from the Biello Martin Songbook.

Dear Reader: Excitable Speech
Ulises Bookshop

Join Ulises for a reading group discussion led by Maria Murphy on Judith Butler’s text “Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative.” This session’s reading will focus on Chapter One of “Excitable Speech” entitled, “Burning Acts, Injurious Speech.” As part of the discussion, Murphy will perform “The Production of Voice,” a short spoken-word piece for voice and voice processor and John Cage’s “Aria” (1958), originally written for interpretation by Cathy Berberian.

“Excitable Speech” by Judith Butler is included in “Twelve Books & Seven Records: Re-voice,” a presentation of books and albums selected by curator Mark Beasley as his contribution to Ulises’s curatorial season Active Voice. Active Voice considers the voice in relation to listening, language, and political agency through a series of programs, artworks, readings, and selected publications from contributors Mark Beasley, Hannah Black, and Steffani Jemison.

Unsung
Mural Arts Philadelphia

What does a voice sound like that’s been stripped from the historical record of a time and place?

Sound artist and composer Nadia Botello and video artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib’s installation Unsung evokes the silenced and forgotten voices of women in the Callowhill neighborhood from its earliest days to our present moment. Interweaving the narratives of an 18th-century sex worker, the wife of an Irish railroad worker, an undocumented immigrant stuck in a cycle of dependency, and descriptions of the houses of pleasure in Philadelphia’s “Sin City” period, the artists create a timeline in image and sound that moves through the neighborhood’s tumultuous history. Four vocalists interpreted and recorded the score, and beneath the Reading Viaduct, their images are projected while industrial steel resonates with displaced voices. Amidst this immersive installation, the unsung women of the neighborhood are written into the historical record.

Anti-Performance: Listening (to) Cyborgs
First Friday, Vox Populi

What is an anti-performance? An invitation to participate.

Listening (to) Cyborgs is a UPenn graduate student run sound technologies workshop where participants met to discuss the politics of listening and sounding, and experiment with such technologies as looper pedals and voice transformers through collaboration and play.

Participants: Layla Ben-Ali, Juan Carlos, Castrillón Vallejo, Mike Ciul, Ben DuPriest, Roksana Filipowska, Marc LeMay, Maria Murphy, Maria Ryan, Charlie Shrader, and Jacob Walls.