Jane Jin Kaisen / Stina Hasse Jørgensen – For More Than One Voice

For More Than One Voice is a score for a collective reading and listening performance that involves more than one voice, possibly many.

For More Than One Voice explores how we can speak, read, and listen to more than one voice in ways that allow for resonance, polyphony, ambiguity, plurality, and embrace.

What is the role of the voice today? Who has the right to speak or be silent? Who has the space to speak? How do we listen? Which voices are heard and how are they heard? What spaces for speaking and listening can we create with others?

You can invite any number of people to take part. Together, collect several quotes about political, philosophical, legal, poetic, and material dimensions of voice, listening, silencing, and the limitations of speaking and being heard. Collect quotes from different sources and in different languages. Print each quote on a separate card. Place the printed cards in a square grid on a hard surface.

Gather around the cards and let the performance begin.

You can read a quote aloud at any time, at your own pace, and in your own tone of voice. Listen to how your voices resonate, dissonate, and overlap with each other. You may keep your card or put it back on the surface for someone else to read. You can read more than one card. Think about how it makes you feel to speak, listen, or be actively silent.

The performance has come to an end once you collectively sense that it is over.

* The collective For More Than One Voice would be happy to receive your quotes and performance documentation to be included in their expanding archive. If you wish to contribute, please write to: formorethanonevoice@gmail.com