The Voice Manifesto
Written on September 15th, 2025 by Dialekti Valsamou-Stanislawski
This manifesto came to be in September 2025, a period when I was deep into my obsession with the human voice, and collaborating with friend and co-conspirator Konstantina Boua. It is fueled by both my obsessions and our common ground, and it is formulated as a common position.
Manifesto/
◬ Voice as a focal point.
⬗ Voice & Identity
► The voice is a mask.
► The voice is identity.
↠As such, it is true. It is both honest and dishonest, as deeply as we are.
It so stands that the voice is a matter in tune with our modern fragmented identities.
⬗ Voice ◦ Matter ◦ Time
► The voice has color, volume, texture, intensity, emotion, character…
► The voice is a vehicle of life. And death. The death that is synonymous with the eternity of the technological.
► It is organic in our body, in constant transformation, digitalized, compressed, tuned and untuned, saved, sent, remembered, dissolved…
► It is a tool we—the animals—use, but in our vocal experience, it is sourced and eternally connected to the body. Thus, the voice is elusively primal and it can show its teeth and ferality despite our—the humans’ and their collectives’— minds’ orthological intentions.
► Technology has taken the here and the now of our world, and of the voice.
► The word is the voice’s dress. And the voice is the word’s dress. Their intertwined choreography feels like that of mind and body, like that of the absolute now with the vector of time.
◬ How this translates into our sound work.
⬗ The sounds, the fragments
► Captures, recordings, traces, fragments…
► Fibers weaving, unweaving, getting entangled, strangled, mixed, or arranged…
► Sounds and melodies. Cries, screams, words, grunts, poems, corporate reports, news and WhatsApp vocals.
► Signals that were forged by our bodies and those of others and that have vibrated our own flesh.
► Sounds that we have captured like prisoners of war or fragile canaries.
► Eager preachers, indifferent sighs, fears and pancake recipes alike.
⬗ And us
► What sort of channeling vessels or imperfect weavers are we to embody in playing with the random, the serendipitous, bringing forth the matter we have worked, distilled, respected, and destroyed ?
