Abstract:
While there is a solid and growing literature on audiences’ affective and empathic
responses to visual art, visual culture, and the mass media more generally, less
attention has been given to how voice might play a central role in such experiences.
In this article I explore two artworks that utilised voice to solicit particular
responses from their audiences. The artworks, This Song is For ... (2019) by
Gabrielle Goliath and Love Story (2017) by Candice Breitz, are analysed here
through the lenses of affect and empathy, particularly as they intersect with
voice studies. I begin by problematising these concepts and exploring the ways
in which they have been theorised in art history, cultural and media studies,
philosophy, and psychology. A careful negotiation between these theoretical
perspectives allows me to construct a theoretical framework through which to
analyse the intensely overwhelming responses the artworks elicited by paying
particular attention to the effects of their soundscapes. I conclude that through
the clever choreography of voice and image, both artworks constructed and
manipulated their audiences in significant ways. By inviting their audiences
on a critical journey, an encounter with these artworks may have led to a
profoundly transformed understanding of the experiences of people who have
suffered as a result of sexual abuse and various other traumas, such as oppression
and displacement.
