The book Mattering Voices, edited by Laasonen Belgrano, Tarvainen and Tiainen starts with a dedication: “To Voice as Nothing, All and always More-Than…” It is divided in three parts, I Voicing Ontologies, II Voicing Intra-active human agencies and III Voicing the more-than-human. The subtitle of the introduction reveals the aim of the collection: How to let a crossroads emerge between (the study of) voices and new materialism? And many of the articles are dealing with those crossroads, not all of them with music or singing.
 
The section that I found most interesting due to my own concerns was of course the third part, which contains four very different approaches. Julianna Preston writes in “Motor-mouthing” among other things of her own performance RPM hums “where voice made the life force of electric motors palpable” (p 149) and refers to Laura Levin’s idea of ‘performing ground’. Tero Nauha refers to the non-standard thought of François Laruelle in his chapter “The non-standard performance with the singing theremin”. Jennie Tiderman-Österberg describes ‘kulning’ a specific practice of voicing with cows in her text “Cow choirs – Singing-with-more-than-human herds”. She refers to music philosopher David Rothenberg’s idea that “we cannot make any kind of music without sensing its resonance in an environment” (Rothenberg 2001, p 4, quoted on p 2003). In her concluding remarks she further notes how “we should not think ‘what is the point’, but ‘this is the point where I depart into something new’. (p 203) In the last chapter “Speaking of atmospheres – More-than voice and voice of the more-than” Norie Neumark refers to Gernot Böhme’s idea of atmospheres and Ben Anderson’s ‘affective atmospheres’ when describing some artworks. First I am sitting in a courtroom, 2017, by Joel Stern, then Rubber Coated Steel, 2016, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and finally several versions of their own work with worms.
 
The afterword by Laura Cull brings in further dimensions in the form of echoes, ontological echoes of a new spiritualism and interspecies echoes of intersectional solidarities. In short: a very rich and thought provoking book even for an artist-scholar like me, with no particular interest or experience in voice or the study of voice. But I am talking to trees, so perhaps I should think about that in terms of voice, too.
 
Laasonen Belgrano, Elisabeth, Tarvainen, Anne and Tiainen, Milla (eds.) Mattering Voices – Studying Voice Through New Materialism. Routledge 2025
 
 
 

In the beginning of the year I read a small book, easy to carry around, with brief texts, easy to read in a coffee break, but did not remember to make any notes: Interpretation in Qualitative Research – Key concepts in Qualitative methods. The reason why I found, rather surprisingly, a book on key concepts of qualitative methods in my hands, was that we contributed a small text to the collection with Pilvi Porkola. Our concept was “Performance” (pp 75-79), although performance as research would have been a more apt title. When trying to remember my reading experience the two texts on diffraction seemed most useful; “Diffraction” by Vivienne Bozalek and Michelins Zembylas (pp 32-34) and “Diffractive analysis” by Kathryn Storm and Shakhnoza Kayumova (pp 35-39).
 
The first one focuses on reflexivity, diffraction and interpretation, and tries to understand and even overcome the differences. “Although diffraction and reflection differ both as methodologies and as practices, being grounded in different ontologies, epistemologies, and ethics, there is some continuity in relation to certain forms of interpretation.” (p 34).
 
The second one focuses on diffractive analysis and interpretation as a practical methodology. ” As a methodological orientation, then, the theoretical ideas and goals of diffraction are quite clear. What this looks liken translated into actual methods and analytic processes, however, varies widely (and should, since diffraction is fundamentally about complexity, difference, hybridity and emergence from local conditions). (p 36) They mention diffractive studies that “think-with” data, others are reading data “through” each other to produce interpretive pattern of difference, and many are decentering the human while deliberately including the researcher as part of the process. They note that “diffractive methods enable us to examine how boundaries of differences are produced in our knowledge-making practices” and quote Barad’s point that “knowing [does] not come from standing at a distance and representing but rather from direct material engagement with the world” (Barad 2007, 49, quoted on p 38).
 
A handbook to return to, when brief clarifying or explanatory quotes are needed…
 
 
 
Karin Murris & Mirka Koro (eds.) Interpretation in Qualitative Research – Key concepts in Qualitative methods, New York: Routledge 2025
 
 
 

It is already quite a while ago I read the book Geographies of Us. Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages edited by Sondra Fraleigh and Shannon Rose Riley (Routledge 2024) The reason I started reading it is because I contributed a small text as one of the practice pages and wanted to know it what kind of context it ended up in. If I would have understood the scope of the book I would have included a bit more theory and reflection, but anyway, the book is a fascinating collection and I am happy that Shannon Rose Riley invited me to join. She edited with Lynette Hunter one of the first books about performance as research, Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research – Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies (Palgrave Macmillan 2009) which I contributed to as well. Geographies of US is a strange title, which probably refers to the attempt at taking a global rather then US-centric view. Most of the contributions are linked to dance and to philosophy, the main interests of Sondra Fraleigh, a well known figure even outside the dance world, but span across indigenous approaches, de-colonial awareness and place thought, with texts by Adesola Akinleye, philosopher Edward S. Casey and many, many others, all in all 20 chapters divided into four parts with fascinating titles: Part I Enworlding, Rewinding, Decentering, Transit/Pluraling, Performing, Attending to, Dancing; Part II Horse, Lion, Queer Animal, Skin; Part III Tree, River, Carbon, Stone and Part IV Place, Plasma, Pluriverse, Potato.
The text I found most affinities with is, unsurprisingly Riley’s “Moving with Cats” (158-182), not only because of the focus on performing with cats and lions and post-human theory but also because of an explicit reference to performance as research as methodology. I did, however, turn some corners in the article by Casey, “Awe and Empathy” (316-332) to remember terms like co-implacement, the idea that “place in the natural realm is never entirely isolated” but “exists always and only in relation to other places” in a “composition made up of a set of contiguous places”. (319) And “affect transmission”, a term used by Cynthia Willett, that takes place in animal communication as clusters of affects “that together signify entire states of emotional being” and “become building blocks of entire animal societies”. In the case of trees or fungi he prefers to speak of “significant forms of intra-species and interspecies semiosis” rather than affect (328).
I should have turned more corners, though. The book is filled with different ways of combining body and place, site and identity and movement and many of the practice pages included exercises or suggestions.
 
 
Fraleigh, Sondra & Riley, Shannon Rose (eds.) Geographies of Us. Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages Routledge Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance. London and New York: Routledge 2024.