Jasmina & Kamila Metwaly
Visitations, while the voice is in your mouth
Conversations in the installation
With: Jasmina Metwaly, Kamila Metwaly, Salma Said & Ute Wassermann

26 February 2022, 5pm
Please register via register@kuenstlerischeforschung.berlin
Please note the max. capacity of registrations for the event has now been reached.
Last day of the installation, extended opening hours from 2-8pm (no registration necessary to visit the installation).

In this conversation we would like to discuss the different source of sounds with their, at times, abstract resemblances or residues of the human voice with their transformations into meta-human, post-zoe transmutations. How do these transformations and transmutations speak towards the impossibility of creating a “unique” (Cavarero) collective? How do the overly stretched and slowed down voices result in moments of conflict, in which the listener is no longer capable of distinguishing individual voices? Here, we wonder about what happens right before we open our mouths, what happens to these urgent sounds and voices – in the membranes of the (en)closed mouth – right before the chants come out. The tongue in this instance is the antecedent protagonist of the oral. Or, what in Polish language would be referred to as: “Na jezykach” – literally meaning “on the tongues” or in tongues, or/and, when something is or will be “the talk” of something.

Access: Free entry. Our space is accessible by wheelchair.
The max. capacity for the event is 20 visitors at a time. 

The 2G+ rule applies: To attend the event, you must bring a proof of vaccination or recovery + a negative rapid test (Antigen-test from the last 24 hours) OR proof of booster vaccination. Additionally, all visitors must wear an FFP2 mask in the space at all times.

Jasmina and Kamila Metwaly’s research project The Voice of the Wind is not a Metaphor, conducted as fellows of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme 2020/21, employs components of a series of encounters and dialogues that have taken place in the period of these two years. Navigating and interweaving different formats such as online workshops and meetings in person with a series of sound pieces, the installation Visitations becomes a means of transposing this process and giving it another form.

During this series of encounters, Jasmina and Kamila Metwaly collaborated with different artists and activists to create a vocabulary that breaks down exchange situations, marking how our voice(s) – both as a political tool and a metaphor – change(s) in contexts of theatricality and instituting. In the process of editing and (re)interpreting, some key provocations drove this research to assume a new presence in the space: how do we understand our voices as a singular and collective tool of transformation? How does displacement, distance and being in motion sound? What tools facilitate the mutation/transformation of voice(s)? How do we arrive as a group, organize, and mobilize our futures?

Comprising an 8-channel audio-visual installation, the work brings together moments from the research and composes alternating realities between various human and non-human vocalities; words and discussions shared amongst the participants, voices of protest and chanting. The audio and video relationship creates access points into the joint research. Sound becomes an abstract resemblance or a residue of the human voice; it slowly transforms into mechanical noises. These transformations and transmutations may also represent the impossibility of the collective – the overly stretched and slowed down voices seemingly resulting in moments of conflict, in which the listener is no longer capable of distinguishing individual voices. Each speaker position, therefore, continues to create its own space within the space, at times appearing in the front, at times disappearing back into the group, evoking the sensation of voices overlapping, talking over each other, and even canceling each other out. In one moment, the sound repudiates the image, and in the next scene, it complements its presence and vice versa. The speakers have been developed for this installation by Ola Zielińska together with Jasmina Metwaly based on a drawing titled Kobieta (“Woman”) (1996). The deformed drawing becomes a speaker, dispersed in space. The online publication Scream. Follow, is a visual intervention by Ola Zielińska and Olga Lewicka, a work stemming from this project.

Duration: 50 minutes

With appearances and sounds of: Leila Bencharnia, Agnieszka Bułacik, Binta Diaw, Chiara Figone, Heba Habib, Kelly Krugman,  Olga Lewicka, Yara Mekawei, Doireann O’Malley, Agnieszka Rożyńska, Arkadiusz Półtorak, Salma Said, Laure de Selys, Ute Wassermann, Giovanna Esposito Yussif, Ola Zielińska, and the peacock
A film by and camera work: Jasmina Metwaly
Video editors: Mohamed Gawad, Jasmina Metwaly
Scenography: Ola Zielińska
Sound interpretation and edit: Kamila Metwaly, with Max Schneider
Audio mix: Max Schneider
Project producer: Kelly Krugman
Project assistant: Isaac Herron
Carpeting: Peter Lowas
Special thanks: Ute Wassermann for conducting a series of voice workshops throughout the last two years, Cilia Erens, Iza Szostak, Sophia Krugman, our beloved mother Dorota Metwaly, Archive Books, New Visions, PAF (Performing Arts Forum), AWU Radio, M{if} (Museum of Impossible Forms), Miriam Coretta Schulte and Salma Said for sharing video material filmed during rehearsals for performance Behind Your Eyeballs.

For visiting the installation, the 2G+ rule (proof of vaccination or recovery and FFP2 mask) applies: Visiting the exhibition is only permitted for people who are either fully vaccinated or have recovered from a COVID-19 infection, and wear an FFP2 mask in the space. We have a max. capacity of 15 visitors at a time.

Opening hours: Saturdays, 2-6pm or by appointment.