Hydra is a performative investigation, with the mission to master the female voice in the public space and dig into the unspoken, using the voice as a discipline in the discourse of personal agency and authenticity. The digging technique aims to dramatize the individual voices into a collective one – a matriarchal figure of voices in resistance to a patriarchal landscape. The piece, as a many-voiced Hydra, is a consequence of the two-month process and voice workshops held by the artist, dealing with the autobiographies of the six female agents, their voices, tongues, and wombs through different voice techniques and exercises. The mistresses of the voice, the group of six purposely chosen female agents, dug out the pits, tucking their voices into the holes, and creating the cavities in the ground where they placed their silences, screams, secrets, and stories through cacophonic experience developed in the process. In this period, their bodies resided in their real self-voices. The field they dug on, as a skin of the public space, but an agent itself, was fertilized by the voices and became a place of the six vocal monuments – authentic creatures. It is only in the dialogue between ourselves and others that we can arrive at an authentic voice of our own. Therefore, the narrative of this digging tale fractures our individual voices and locates us, as female agents, collectively.

Performers: Denise Lee, Lucia Gonzalez, Rand Ibrahim, Laura Leal, Leila Keivan, Jana Imo

Camera: Yavor Krasimirov Minchev, FangSheng Chou

Sound: Yavor Krasimirov Minchev, David Bilek