Mouth-Watering

The tension between self-affirmation and the dissolution of the self constitutes one of the most fruitful axes for considering the transformative potential of art. At a time when art runs the risk of defining itself in relation to the firm image of its creator, on the accuracy of the statement, or on the rigidity of the concept, this reflection proposes a shift in order to think about body-voice as a medium through which something passes rather than as a monument that is erected. This is not about instituting a closed method, nor about converting experience into an immutable doctrine, but about remaining porous, open, in a state of radical listening.

1.

In a world obsessed with archiving, classification, and permanence, to propose that a practice remain in flux may seem unproductive. However, it is precisely this lack of any fixed state in which its transformative power lies. It can still engage in dialogue with other lesser or affective forms of documentation. A performance that does not crystallize into a closed method that is standardized as a “style” or “signature” preserves its ability to respond to the unpredictable by seeking to become increasingly less recognizable. Following Paulina Varas (2015), performance can be understood as an archive in movement rather than as an accumulation of dead evidence. It is a critical process that activates memories, emotions, and resonances in the present. To document or record, in this sense, is not about defining oneself but rather about being open the circulation involved in living.

This approach is based on an implicit hypothesis, that is, a performative practice that aspires to transform its environment cannot define itself. This fluidity implies accepting uncertainty as a working condition. Certainty is replaced by alertness, and rigid planning is replaced by a willingness to improvise. One’s practice thus becomes a permanent conversation with its context, changing when the location, architecture, light, temperature, colors or humidity changes, or when the mood of the bodies present transform. It changes with the receipt of a bank statement, with a certified letter, with what happened the day before and what the next day will bring. It also changes with what doesn’t seem to change, that which penetrates our consciousness, such as the violent and unjust killing of people in Gaza.

2.

The fieldwork I have conducted in natural environments (in particular, in the sea and other bodies of water) leads me to think of the wordless voice as a medium that suggests other logics of time, rhythm, and listening. Water, with its density and resistance, becomes an intermediary that shapes vocal production and forces the body to adapt and transform. This material and sensorial dialogue goes beyond the framework of representation and is inscribed in a choreography of forces where not only am I unable to control the outcome, I don’t want to.

In this sense, I echo Brandon LaBelle’s (2014) idea of an “expanded voice,” understood as a voice that exceeds the vocal apparatus and is inscribed in a vibrational fabric that involves other bodies, both human and nonhuman.

These displacements allow us to think of the voice not as a fixed object or a simple vehicle of logos, but as a force in transit that emerges in relation to the context that receives it and by the body that sustains it. In my practice, bodies are submerged in water, forced to negotiate their balance with a medium that destabilizes, suspends, and overwhelms them. “To extract a voice” in the midst of this instability is to allow the vibration to expand not from a set point but from a body that becomes water, that breathes in fits and starts, that is interrupted and begins again with each wave.

LaBelle speaks of micro-oralities as minor gestures that reveal the tensions of the voice in its multiple social inscriptions. In my experience, water functions as a catalyst for these micro-oralities, since it turns breathing into gasping, screaming into a bubble, speech into a liquid stutter. What emerges is not an articulated discourse but rather an archive of intensities where the voice exposes the vulnerability of the body that produces it. In this way, the voice does not affirm but rather allows itself to be traversed. It does not dominate but rather accommodates itself to the ebb and flow of an ever-changing surface.

3.

The practice proposed in these lines distances itself from the productivist logic that demands verifiable results. Instead, it situates itself in the territory of the uncertain, the unstable, and the fluid. The artist does not position herself as an “egocentric producer” or as a radiating nucleus of meaning, but rather as a witness and medium (Cavarero, 2005), a figure open to being traversed by the materiality and intensity of an environment. It is a voice that challenges the traditional philosophical privilege given to logos over the bodily voice. This does not mean rejecting the word but rather displacing it from its throne. This decentering questions the modern notion of authorship and shifts the practice toward a relational dimension, where knowledge is produced in a situated and embodied way (Haraway, 1988).

Performance, conceived in this way, eschews the paradigm of certainty and verbal loquacity as guarantors of knowledge. Rather than the primacy of discourse, bodily experience is privileged as a generator of meaning. The voice, freed from words, acts as an autonomous organism that vibrates, summons, and destabilizes. Nonverbal vocal emissions (which can include whispering, grunting, breathing, or moaning) function as particles of an uncoded language that evade translation and open up other layers of perception. Every minute detail, both anticipated and unforeseen, modifies the relational experience.

4.

In this situation, listening is not a passive attitude but rather a political act. In the logic of institutions and normative structures, value is often given to what is affirmed, explained, and argued. Listening, on the other hand, shifts the focus and deactivates the centrality of the self, and questions the hierarchy of speech over silence, of verbal loquacity over bodily experience.

Radical listening involves paying attention to what normally remains beyond comprehension, that is, the murmur of the marginal, voices that don’t fit the verbal register, non-human sounds, and noises normally considered insignificant. In the wordless voice, for example, nuances of experience emerge that cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning and yet profoundly affect the perception of the environment.

5.

A practice’s capacity to transform its environment does not depend on the force it imposes but instead on its ability to inspire other forms of attention. A performance presented as a closed structure invites distant contemplation, but one offered as an open process invites emotional participation.

Vulnerability (the possibility that the work can fail, a degree of exposure, risk, mutability, a change of direction, the fact that the script can be interrupted) is part of this openness. Transforming does not mean imposing a predefined change but rather opening a space in which something different can occur. In this sense, liquid practice is more like a canal than a wall, as it does not block, but rather channels, redirects, filters.

6.

Paradoxically, even a practice born from a rejection of fixed meaning can end up solidifying into a recognizable style, into a method that others (and oneself) codify and teach as a recipe. The risk of fluidity becoming the new norm is always present. The only way to avoid this is to keep the internal movement of displacement fluid and alive, that is, to change environments, materials, modes of presence, even at the cost of losing effectiveness or legibility.

This approach has clear political implications. If institutions tend to absorb and neutralize artistic practices by fixing them in recognizable and repeatable formats, the fluid practice advocated here introduces a margin of indeterminacy that makes capturing them difficult. As José Esteban Muñoz (2009) points out, performance can be a utopia, insofar as it embodies what is not yet realized and what is yet to come. Indeterminacy is not lack but resistance.

Here, the figure of the artist as medium is once again key. The medium does not interpret for oneself, nor even for an audience, but rather transmits what passes through them. The medium does not claim ownership of the message or sign it as its own. Its authority does not come from coherence or continuity, but from its willingness to allow itself to be traversed. Pilar Bonet (2017), referring to Josefa Tolrà, states that the artist places herself in the space of listening, allowing the work to occur through her presence rather than through her will. “An illuminated being takes my hand.” This perspective reinforces the notion that the power of performance resides in openness and the ability to be permeated by the environment, rather than in the affirmation of self or the imposition of control.

7.

In the proposed performance practice, walking with uncertain steps is not a symptom of weakness but rather a conscious strategy. Insecurity forces one to be awake, to listen, to adapt. An uncertain step is, by definition, an attentive step.

The transformation of the environment is not achieved by the accumulation of certainties but by the persistence of that alertness. The artist does not have to conquer a territory but instead to be in it in such a way that she modifies it (and is modified by it) without leaving any fixed traces. What remains, if anything does, is not a monument but a change in temperature, an echo in the bodily memory of those who were present. This echo can reinforce a sense of belonging to oral traditions, to uncodified forms of transmission, or to an emotional legacy that must be cared for.

This care, however, does not imply turning it into a personal brand or a market niche. The risk is that even vulnerability and openness end up being absorbed by institutional logic and capitalized by professional formats, with degrees or programs that train artists to become specialists in the intangible. If this happens, the practice loses its indeterminate character and becomes normalized as a recognizable style.

Transmission, if it exists, should not be reduced to fixed protocols or exportable recipes but rather sustained as a shared and situated responsibility, a form of knowledge that is transmitted in specific contexts, as a collective, in contact with what happens.

In times when institutions seek to capitalize on singularity and turn it into a brand, insisting on a practice that refuses to be fixed is a gesture of resistance. This is not about disappearing but instead about appearing differently, not as a center but as a current, not as truth but as possibility. A voice that, by not speaking, speaks, and a body that, by not imposing itself, transforms.

NOTE
The voice is not sustained solely by individual will, it depends on the bodies that traverse it, on the memory that welcomes it, and on the contexts that condition it. Not all voices originate in the same place or find the same resonances. Sometimes we think we are transforming the environment but it is actually the environment that transforms us. Recognizing this is not giving up but rather truly listening, opening up to what comes and to what cannot be controlled, allowing the collective, the common, and the situational to expand the possibilities for action.

Sources
Bonet, P. (2017). La mano guiada: Josefa Tolrà y la práctica de la presencia. (The Guided Hand: Josefa Tolrà and the Practice of Presence). Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.
Cavarero, A. (2005). For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford University Press.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14-3.
LaBelle, B. (2014). Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary. Bloomsbury Academic.
Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press.
Varas, Paulina (2015). Archivos en uso: prácticas artísticas y nuevas políticas de la memoria (Archives in Use: Artistic Practices and New Politics of Memory). Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Metales Pesados.