Gaia Ginevra Giorgi

From states of trance, the work explores the compositional possibilities of the default mode network — the brain system activated during rest — through somatic-choreographic practices, extended vocal techniques, psychoacoustic phenomena, and auditory hallucinations. These are approached as queer, fluid, and transformative strategies for haunting spaces of dominant power and knowledge.

May falling asleep (never) open our mouth – working title examines mediumship as the ability to inhabit the threshold between the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, to contain multiplicities, and to engage in performative practices of interspecific intimacy between human and more-than-human entities.

The voice — a medium that constantly negotiates the boundary between the inside and the outside — constitutes the central axis of this investigation. Patriarchal narratives have historically confined the capacity to enter into contact with other entities to the domains of the feminine, the diabolical, and later, the psychiatric.

Through a historical reading of the oppressive modalities of the male gaze in the intertwined fields of spiritualism, stage magic, and science — and drawing on the theoretical and political perspectives of anthropologist Clara Gallini and the critical illusionism of Mariano Tomatis — the performance frames the voice as an instrument of speech, resistance, and liberation.