Intimate listening: A performative experiment based on re-enactments of intimacy

As part of a larger research-creation project, I investigate the connection between re-enactment and intimacy, two seemingly incompatible areas. Re-enactments usually reproduce major events from the history of a society, a religion or an artistic practice. I instead consider the desacralization of re-enactment by reproducing an event belonging to the private sphere and the seemingly banal daily life of the individual. The first practical exploration took place in September 2024 in the form of a theatre workshop conducted with students The Artistic Creation Masters at Université Grenoble Alpes, which set up different techniques for recreating personal memories whilst reconstructing an intimate sphere onstage. Through using different theatrical configurations, forms of storytelling and interactions between the spectators’ bodies and actors’ bodies, we explored the voice’s capacity to resonate through the bodies and create a connection. This article addresses the idea that intimacy is constructed foremost through a shared sensorial resonance: a space of sonorous relationships where embodied vocality is at the centre of the experience. It seeks to understand how voice, through breath, tone and vibration can constitute a conduit for affects and presences.