Victoria Karlsson

The Ridge Salon 3

The image of someone buried with a bird in their mouth suggested to me a certain kind of intimacy, which became the starting point for this score. In it, I tentatively reference imaginary listening; bird/human transformations (I thought of the movie ‘Howls Moving Castle’); dan-mei literature in particular when centered on shapeshifting entities, changing from human to animal and back; relations with Donna Haraway’s more-than-human kin. All, I imagine, accessed through a queer listening – a listening beyond, underneath and past the heteronormative din of the everyday.

Biography

Victoria Karlsson is an inter-disciplinary artist and researcher, working across sound art and performance. In her practice, she explores cultural aspects of sound and listening, and she is particularly interested in intersections between sound, listening, queer theory and affect.

In her practice-based PhD research degree from CRiSAP, UAL, Victoria investigated experiences of 'inner sounds', which she defines as "sounds we hear in our minds, similar to, but different from, an inner voice." Through her practice, she explored experiences of inner sounds through performance, visual and text scores, and sculpture. Her research investigated our cultural attitudes and beliefs about inner sounds, and what insight those beliefs can give us into our broader relationships with sounds and listening.