ABOUT

Vocal Womb is both a biomedical opera performance and installation work externalising the hidden, fleshy and deeply personal workings of the voice from inside a singer’s body. The audience sit across from an opera singer. She wears a laryngoscope, a thin viewing tube, which passes through her nose providing real-time video of her vocal chords projected onto the walls. She sings and her voice reverberates in the space. Audio is also captured by stethoscopes placed on her skin capturing the sounds of lungs inhaling and exhaling, and other internal organs gurgling with their everyday functions. Audiences are invited to blend these internal audio signals and amplify them into the chamber using a controller. By externalising these intimate, internal mechanisms in an exaggerated and overwhelming sonic and visual experience, audience members are asked to confront the contradictions of our voices: who gets to wield them and what that means for our humanity.

Vocal Womb is a profoundly intimate and surprising experience.

CREATIVE TEAM

Concept/ Music & Performance: Eve Klein
Creative & Technical Development: Ravi Glasser-Vora and Eve Klein
Text From: Quinn Eades (2015), All the Beginnings: A Queer Autobiography of the Body, Tantanoola, North Melbourne.
Virginia Barratt (2017) mMouth hHouse pPanic cCathedral.
Funding and Support: The work has been assisted by the APRA AMCOS Art Music Fund, the University of Queensland’s School of Music, and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. Vocal Womb was conceived through the SITUATE: Art in Festivals professional development program and SITUATE are providing ongoing administrative support.

 

REVIEWS

TimeOut Melbourne Review: https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/news/the-6-coolest-things-we-saw-this-weekend-at-mofo-012218

TheMusic.com.au Review: http://amandalaver.com/mona-foma-2018-feature

The Conversations Review: https://theconversation.com/mofo-at-mona-operatic-bodies-experimental-encounters-and-expanded-horizons-90538

ArtsHub Review: https://www.artshub.com.au/festival/news-article/reviews/festivals/sarah-walker-photography/mofo-2018-255149

 

FEATURE ARTICLES

Cut Common Feature: https://www.cutcommonmag.com/eve-klein-invites-you-inside-her-vocal-womb-literally/

Limelight Magazine Feature: https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/features/entering-the-vocal-womb/

ABC Classic: http://www.lostateminor.com/2018/01/11/opera-singer-preparing-perform-cameras-streaming-internal-bodily-functions/