Grateful to our eager readers, we welcome all to join us for the last Reading Group this autumn! Fall’s final session of informal monthly meetings to read various publications focused on voice, sound and listening will take place on Wednesday, 7th of December, 5-7pm.

The last Reading Group before Christmas led by Jo Hislop focuses on Introduction: Movement from Lexicon of The Mouth by Brandon LaBelle, published in 2014. In Lexicon of The Mouth, LaBelle discusses how the significance of the mouth, as a site, has been overlooked in considerations of the voice, linguistics and embodiment. The text draws upon the frantic comings and goings that occur in this bodily space, somewhere that is full of activity, a site of entanglement. By highlighting the cacophony of functions and actions that take place in this ‘oral cavity’, LaBelle places voice in inescapable connection to the body.

‘It is a meeting point, a contact zone where language performs as a powerful agent, yet one that also spirits so many oral imaginings and poetics, where surfaces and depths continually interweave in feverish exchange.’

To close the session, we will watch a clip from Samuel Beckett’s play ‘Not I’, a monologue for a mouth, written and premiered in 1972, as well as read lines from the monologue out loud.

In order to get a PDF copy of the selected publication in advance, send an email to valentina@publics.fi.

Jo Hislop is an artist and producer working across photography, film and writing. Her work explores the nuances and intricacies of sensorial and bodily experience. Originally from the North of England, she is currently based in Helsinki.