Voice, lap dances and embodiment - A conversation with Marina Miliou-Theocharaki

Welcome to the Onassis AiR Conversations. My name is Myrto Katsimicha. I am a curator and cultural worker based in Athens and your host in this series of recorded encounters with the participants of Onassis AiR. Founded on the principles of learning and doing with others, Onassis AiR is an international research residency program in Athens initiated by the Onassis Foundation in 2019. They say that what happens in one place stays in that place. I cannot find a better way to describe all the things that have been happening inside the Onassis AiR house, since I first entered as a participant of the Critical Practices Program in Fall 2019. The truth is, it is not easy to transmit an open-ended process of relationing, which is very personal and relevant to a specific place and moment in time. How can I then give you a glimpse into that process? Everything starts with a conversation. Throughout this series, I'll be speaking with the Onassis AiR participants to shed light on their artistic practices and needs, as well as to reflect on ways of being and working together.

In this conversation, I have the great pleasure to talk with Marina Miliou-Theocharaki. Marina is a performer, writer and curator based in Athens. Together, we participated in the Critical Practices Program of Onassis AiR in Fall 2019. In her work, Marina explores the relation between voice and gender and the ever-changing role play between subject and object. During her residency, she looked into the politics of hosting through a performance that took the form of a lap dance and was finally presented in the exhibition 'It moves, and it shouts' at Haus N Athen in December 2019. Today, we discuss about her experience at Onassis AiR, her interest into voice and its historicity and we have also invited the curator Panos Giannikopoulos to talk together about the piece that she created for the show.

Very nice to see you!

Very nice to see you, too! I'm very happy to have this conversation with you and I must say that this is a very special moment for me, because we spent together three full-time months exchanging practices and concerns, learning and reflecting on ourselves together with others. So, thank you for that! Let's start from the beginning. I'd like to start from the very first week of our program and particularly from your Curate-a-Day.

Amazing! OK, great.

Curate-a-Day was a format that we used to introduce our practices to each other and on that day you invited us to your house to a performative presentation, part of which took place on your bed. That was a very intimate moment I have to say.

It was the beginning of all.

Exactly! Through this presentation, I could actually really see how the body, language and the voice are central elements in your artistic practice. As you've stated before, you use your body and your voice to explore the layered historicity of your voice. Can you tell us a bit more about your practice and how did you start engaging with these questions?

Totally! In regards to that day, we went outdoors for a walk around the city and then in order to also show you the more personal side of me -and that also connects with my practice- I thought about, in addition to the outside, bringing you to the inside, to a tour of my house. A tour of my house that happened in a very intimate way, because as you remember, the audience, let's say, would come in the house one by one and the audience member had to wear earplugs that were connected to my phone and through an application you could hear the sound of my voice and basically it would catch every saliva moving, every time I would swallow, etc. I really liked the idea of the embodiment of the voice and actually not only what is said, but also what is produced in the body when something is said. So, I was thinking, how can I bring you even closer rather than just talking to you and touring you inside my house while making you hear my insides also speaking. It was very amazing because everyone was willing to go through that experience and I took you around that different rooms -it's not that big of a house, but around the different rooms- and I had a poem or an excerpt of a reading for each one of the rooms. It was kind of a storytelling, a narration, to see my spaces through my eyes, through the readings that inform my practice, through the poems that I connect with and embody and through the sound of the liquids of my body as well, of my mouth, let's say. So, I think it was an attempt to create intimacy and to kind of open up to the idea of the collective through the processes that I use and the methodologies that I use, which is the voice. As you said, I'm very curious about the voice as a choreographic tool, as another limb, as a gesture that historically has been creating a lot of ethical and political dynamics between genders, between people, between gaps of communication. Most of history has been written from certain voices and a lot of other voices have been left aside and I'm curious about this repression of the voice. Theoretically, but also practically, because there's a lot of critique, for example, female philosophers voices, the actual texture of the voice, the actual sound of it instead of the work of these philosophers. So, it has been a tool of repression and I used that research and that information and through embodying these, I kind of abstracted it and used my voice in different kinds of ways, choreographing it and playing with this expectation, this anticipation, desire, discuss the fear that one is experiencing when a voice is very loud. This roleplay between eroticism and distance that a voice can create.

Voice is quite unique and also the way that we speak in different languages is unique. So, while you were talking, I was thinking, that your pieces, the ones that I have seen, are in English. I think I've asked you this question before about the use of English as the language in your pieces instead of Greek.

The answer is really just practical, to be honest. It has not really been a choice. The work that I've shown has been mainly in places where English is the prevalent language of communication. So, for example, Onassis AiR because of the international culture that exists, the research also kind of emerged in English. Also personally, because I've lived for so many years in the States, in Chicago, and I left Greece when I was 18, all of the academic language that I have developed my work upon and my research has been mainly in English. So it's actually a lack of experience. It's not a choice or preference. And the poetic, because I also write a lot, the first language that comes in mind when it comes to a more poetic language is English, only because it comes out more naturally in the academic and in my own practice.

Yeah, I understand and I would actually be also very interested to see a piece of yours in Greek and see what kind of different voices appear within the Greek language.

I'm very curious and I'm really looking forward to doing it actually.

Going back to the research, what was the initial research question that you came with when the program started?

Actually, it was the beginning of the throat lap dance, which is the piece that I developed during the residency. The question was: what kind of exchanges take place in a performance where the questions of subjectivity and objectivity exist and how can I play with these? I know they're really large words, but how can I really diffuse them into the material that I want to use and really play, create a role playing between these two, taking them from a much macro- and larger situations and research that I'm interested in -political situations- and creating a performance around that. And also, the reason why I did The Critical Practices and the reason why I applied was because I also needed a break. I'm educated as a choreographer, as a performer and a performer theorist, and I'm kind of in between. My whole life, I've been working in cultural institutions in the production and curatorial teams and also doing my practice on the side and I needed a break in my city with other people in order to kind of reestablish, redefine my own work after all of these curatorial experiences that I've been through. So, you know, having this double life kind of takes away a lot of your energy and it's very unique to have the time and the space and the collective to really develop your own voice again. So, that was also very important for me.

Was it actually a break for you?

The break of the residency? In many ways, although it was very overpopulated with people, with events, with situations, with occurrences, trips, I think it was really a break because it was a flex in time. It was like time paused. We used to live, at least in a city like Athens, we are used to live in a rhythm of production, monetary production for our survival, creative production for our practice, to be on the move all the time. Taking this decision to really focus on my own practice under the umbrella of our collective, whatever was happening in the collective, it was still a break. All the moments were so special between us, between the people who came, between our trips -Indonesia-, all the moments, the cooking, the moments that we spent individually in our rooms, the open ps. There were a lot, but it was a focus group at the same time and we co-existed. We were co-inhabitants of a space all together and the fact that it was this collective experience which is out of the ordinary, I haven't experienced this before in such a multitude of ways. It was really a break because it was a break in my city where normally I would not allow myself to do that. I would find the time to concentrate. I would find the time to create and do research, but also I would give the time to myself to spend quality moments with people that I care about. It was a vulnerable and really healing experience in a way for me. So it was a break for me, I think.en

OK.

Yeah.

I think it was also for me, for quite the similar reasons that you talked about and this whole idea of spending so much time together actually created these conditions for breaking out from the ordinary.

Yeah.

Looking back after six months and from all of this full program of activities, workshops, seminars, is there a particular moment that has stayed with you until now?

There are two moments that are very different from each other. One of the moments was Irena Tomažin's worksop. I truly enjoyed it, because also it was right up my alley, the use of the voice that she proposed. It opened up a lot of ideas and also how the voice can be a very sensitive medium for people to use and how one can feel really exposed when using the voice as a practice.

I was definitely feeling exposed during this workshop.

Yes, I remember after. Now that I'm saying it I'm remembering it, but it also brought us together. It was also one more experience that we were doing all together and then other conversations came about, like, why are we feeling exposed and what is hidden somatically inside of us in regards to the voice and what keeps us back from expressing it.

As far as I remember, you do voice training for your own practice. So what did Irena's workshop bring more for you?

She reminded me of the physicality of the voice and how it's completely interconnected to physical movements and how one helps the other develop. I also have some dance training and I use various choreographic techniques in my work, but my work is performance and less dance in the traditional way. So, it alarmed me in that way. How can I also use these physical techniques that I embody and not only the voice? Because the voice lessons that I have been doing for the past two and a half years are more about how to actually train and use your voice without hurting your chords, which is great because it has given me a lot of power on my chest and throat, but it's very different. Αnother moment that I could say I will never forget was in Indonesia when we were in the Borobudur Buddhist temple. We had woken up extremely early in the morning, like three o'clock or something, and we took the bus to go to the Buddhist complex and we were so exhausted. You know, we felt raw and open at the same time. We were kind of pushing each other to walk towards the Buddhist complex and the minute we just sat there it was so magical, because we saw the sunrise. It was so magical because it was like a sublime togetherness that we were all experiencing after a lot of exhaustion and a lot of emotional turmoil. And you know, all these exchanges that we've been through. It was like time had stopped there and we're all here collectively experiencing this. Everything else in our body gets accumulated and we're letting it go. For me, it was the moment where I felt really empowered from the togetherness that we were all feeling at that moment.

I was actually about to ask you a question about Indonesia, which relates a lot to the answer that you gave. The whole intensive month, which was designed by Raed Yassin, was based on the notion of the soft shell crab, which was a way to expose ourselves through our senses and I wanted to ask you, because we've been talking a lot about the body, how did this whole trip affect your senses?

I think it was unlearning in the most honest definition of the term. We experienced the place in a collective way, but also in individual ways. We learned about each other, all of our perspectives and sides. We were in a place that we didn't really know culturally and we experienced it in very unknown ways. We didn't know what the next day would bring, but at the same time we had this safety of the collective. At the end of the trip, I felt really open, like an open wound, if I could describe it in terms of the senses, because it was so emotionally and spiritually overwhelming in very good ways, sublime ways, but also in raw ways. So, I think, I felt very open, like a wound and then gradually when I came back I processed all that information and it was the most beautiful, healing and closing of this wound with all of you in there. That's the best way I can describe it.

That's amazing. I think that trip was like the peak of our exhaustion. Three flights to change and so many hours of traveling and then we came back and somehow the space became really ours and we just started enjoying the space and the rooms in a different way, for sure.

Yeah, I totally agree.

Let's go back to the throat lap dance, because we have a guest today with us, which is a person that you've collaborated with and he can tell us a bit more about this piece. I remember the first day that you presented this piece to us and it was very intimidating. It was during Manolis Tsipos's feedback workshop and you chose to actually present the performance. We formed a circle, you sat on a table, you had your papers and everything and then you started doing this very weird thing with your voice that I had never experienced before and it put me in a really awkward position -awkward in an interesting way. Also, in a meaningful way, because I was considering the act of gazing, the intimacy of the person who was sitting in front of you, but also the way that the person was exposed by all of us looking at them. So, this piece is part of a larger series of works that you call "The Lapdance Buffet" and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the idea of the lap dance, your role in this piece and the ways that you will continue developing more of these pieces.

Yes, sure. Before Onassis AiR, I was a dance web scholar at ImPulsTanz Vienna, which is a festival of dance in Vienna, and I had a workshop there where we actually did lap dance and private dance techniques. This was a workshop with Danny Brown that made me question what is a lap dance and what kind of exchange does a lap dance entail. Is it only erotic or can it be an exchange, any exchange between people, between two people, the one facing the other? I was also curious about the idea of hosting and the roles of the host and the receiver and this goes back again to the subject and the object and how these roles can be exchanged during a performance. I wanted to play with desire, eroticism and the voice, of course, and also to see what happens when there's no climax in this anticipation. What happens if desire and eroticism is not as expected in a traditional form of a lap dance and the woman or the female identifying person doesn't give to the receiver what they're expecting? So, I thought, "how can I create a lap dance?" As you said, the umbrella is "The Lapdance Buffet", the series where I create different lap dances based on the medium used. So, a lap dance could be, as I did with the throat lap dance through the throat and the voice and the idea of narration. Or it could be through sound, with the performer playing different sounds to create different expectations towards the receiver and creating different kinds of desires and playing with that. It can have many different titles. And so this is the first piece that I developed from this series and I was thinking all of these things and I wanted to embed narration, inspired by various feminist manifestos or texts written by female identifying people's experiences. Without being didactic, I created a text that was quite abstract, but it had hints of the topics that I'm interested in. I saw it like a 24-hour bar where the client or the receiver could come in voluntarily and sit on the chair across from me and then I perform, I host this lap dance for them. And then the next one could come and sit on the chair across. Scenographically it was more of a combination of an institutional space -it had an institutional chair and a table- in combination with some fetish elements like a black plastic kind of floor cover and the table was quite sexy, I think. It was this play between the traditional and the non-traditional. It was an alteration of things. The awkward thing that you're talking about is this technique that I've been training in, which is called throat singing. It's some kind of throat singing. It's not literally throat singing, because that has a huge culture behind it, that I don't embody, but I'm inspired by it anyways, and I kind of managed to contain the voice in my chest while the mouth and my facial features actually moved. I can totally understand. It's a very strange experience for the viewer and especially when you do it, if you're doing it privately, let's say to one person who's might have different expectations of the idea of a lap dance, let's say.

I think it's time to invite in Panos Giannikopoulos who is a curator based in Athens and who was also the curator of the exhibition.

'It moves and it shouts'.

Which took place at Haus N Athen last December [2019] and Marina was one of the participating artists where she actually presented the throat lap dance. Panos, hi!

Hello, thank you so much for inviting me.

Thank you for being with us. We were actually talking with Marina about the throat lap dance and I would like you to describe your experience, looking back to the exhibition, with the lap dance and how your collaboration started. Why did you choose this particular piece, which was actually still in progress when you chose to present it in the exhibition?

I was familiar with Marina's work before our collaboration. I had the chance to meet her when she came back from Chicago and we had brief conversations about corporeality, performativity and the voice. But the first time that I actually had the chance to see her work live was the Open Salon #2 organized by Onassis AiR. I felt that the way she created this sensorial experience using sound, spoken word, light and even the smells was brilliant. We managed to have a conversation on her work in progress, "The Lapdance Buffet" and as we were speaking, it just triggered so many things that I was already thinking of concerning the group show I was organizing at Haus N Athen. At once I thought it's a match. I was kind of in love with the way she was articulating her thoughts whilst ther work was playfully dismantling language. The meaning was not only in the words anymore, but in what came between them, the silences and the pulling apart, the restructuring of the sound along with the movement and the gaze. So, I decided I wanted to collaborate with her and I included her in the show. In my mind she was already there. It was also funny because when I visited the space, the Onassis AiR building, I saw a book there -I think it was José Esteban Muñoz's book- which I was also reading. So, we had the same references and I think we were able to go further deep on these references together. So, the show I was working on was about empathizing, becoming hybrids, dancing bodies, dancing minds toward the political body and I wanted to investigate new ways to perceive the world, contextualizing knowledge as a situated experience, but also playing with these experiences and navigating this world through desire and pleasure. Marina's work was also at the same direction. We had the same questions also about our position in this narrative we were trying to create.

The timing was perfect because we were both researching similar perspectives. I mean, even the title of the show 'It moves and it shouts', it could be the title of my piece, you know. So, it happened extremely smoothly.

I think that dialogue is truly important, especially when there's a work in progress and the curator is there to have this exchange with you. That's so important.

Yeah and he also came in the studio, in the Onassis AiR studio, a couple of times and we basically exchanged ideas and references and it was a really nice collaboration because it was like we were co-creating something.

Yes, and also the exhibition evolved with Marina's ideas. I also changed my perspective about so many things. She helped me to even rethink the space and the connection with the works.

Yeah, what was funny about the exhibition is that there were so many people in the opening, so the performance had also another element to deal with. How is the voice and the performance heard when there are so many people? Which was a challenge, but it was also an interesting challenge for me how to deal with it on the spot. And then Panos suggested to me that we do it again. So we did it again and again. So, I ended up doing it three times, I think, and all the three times there were again many people, but enough to just fit in the space and only focus on my performance. So, the space also was empty, the rest of the space, which had an incredible echo. So, it was like three different performances, I would say, in terms of how the environment was around it.

Well, thank you both so much, I have one last question for you, Marina. After all these experiences and all these things that we discussed today, how do you define what is a collective?

What is a collective? The collective takes into consideration sharing responsibilities, offering care, respecting differences and loving to coexist individually under a collective umbrella. So, it is this sense of coexisting and respecting each other at the same time, each other's individuality at the same time, I think, and this is what we definitely felt at Onassis AiR. We shared our energies constantly with each other while being present and absent from each other.

Thank you for listening. If you want to listen to more conversations, please subscribe to our channel. You can find more about the Onassis AiR residency program and each participant at www.onassis.org. This series is produced by Onassis AiR. Thanks to Nikos Kollias, the sound designer of the series and to Nikos Lymperis for providing the original music intro theme.