In the performance, “Thread of the Voice” or “On myth,” Cecilia Vicuna started delivering her performance to the audience with a nice sound that carries a musical song, using the noise of the loops shells to add music to the song. But there is a question that carries an idea: does the sound matter? Vicuna appears as if she performs a soliloquy for herself, in which there is no sound, knowing that she addresses audience. The audience could not hear the important part of the performance about the central idea of the talk, which is myth. They could not hear that part because a problem in the microphone, and another reason is that she got sore throat; however, she declares that she was NOT going to repeat it. The audience has an excuse that they could not listen because she did not set the mike up well before she started speaking. Then she did not repeat what she said, so why did she perform to audience then? She agrees that “she perceives words in sounds” and “the word that we use now SOUND.” So, where is the sound? The audience missed the definition of myth, its origin, and two out of three contemporary mythical stories in South America. They missed Vicuna’s preferred myth and its story. Vicuna’s idea about not repeating the ideas that were conveyed through sound is because people may no longer care about myth nowadays, so she means that the audience need not to care about not hearing the sound that conveys words and language discussing myth. So did the audience miss nothing important? She mentions at the beginning, “Words are time”. Since time passes and is not repeated, she refuses to repeat her words about the first big part of the performance.
Yes, I think we agree the sound is crucial — which is also at least partially CV’s point. I read the interruption somewhat differently, in that audience members in the back effectively interrupt the performance (which was set up not to be amplified) asking for more volume (rather than listening). Thus it becomes ironic, or poetic, when the amplification comes in and part of the story about industrial noise swallowing up voices is now dramatized in the performance. It’s also a transition and an acknowledgement of the temporality of the performance. There can be no “recapturing” of that moment. It is lost. And a mourning for losses of various sorts is one of her primary themes.