Ester Martin Bergsmark’s making public

voice under consists of two different types of material, film and text in the shape of: 

•    a performative, contemplative film screening and, 
•    a book consisting of a collection of text

1 September schedule 

13:00 there will be a performative film screening,
15:00 a short presentation of the project and the book 

Book you place/ticket here: Ticket

If it is fully booked, you are welcome to come to one of the other screenings and come to the presentation at 15:00.

The performative film screening of the film A Sweetness from Nowhere (work in progress) is held at the Stockholm university of the Arts, Valhallavägen 189 on the following dates:

31 August at 17:00 
1 September at 10:00
1 September at 13:00 (this screening is followed by the Making Public-event)
 2 September at 14:00

The screenings have limited seating’s and you will be able to book a ticket here from 18 August. 

A short summary of my research voice under

My creative practice revolves around finding ways to depict a queer reality. If voice over is the superior voice that dictates truth, I examine voice under, a voice of other truths that exist simultaneously.

In my doctoral thesis voice under, I explore all the parallel voices beyond the dominating all-knowing voice over. The intention is to open up a wider sensory register in both the creation and the experience of film.

The performative screening consists of audio, moving images, and somatic exercises. The aim is to invite the audience to explore a wider sensory register and different ways of seeing. 

The book voice under, gather a collection of texts which explores and plays with the concept voice under through encounters with examples from my own filmmaking, from other filmmakers, as well as more theoretical renderings of bodies, gender, trans experiences, desire, violence, and trauma.

In and through this exploration, I ask: How can the language and imagery of film be used to reach beyond language and imagery? How can a more capacious imagination be activated? The unique potential of film exists in its dizzying ability to create other images and other worlds. Film opens us up to the sensuous. When film activates our memories and feelings, it also creates the possibility of other and different ways of being with them. That is what is filmic about film, and this potential is a queer potential. Because what is queer cannot be reduced to what is visible to the camera.

Public defence

The public defence will be held on the 29 September 2023. 

A longer summary of the research (film and book)

about the film:

Title: A Sweetness from Nowhere (work in progress) 

The work is developed in collaboration with the actors Nina Jeppsson and Louise Löwenberg, the choreographer and dancer Halla Ólafsdóttir, the sound technician Carolina Jinde, the film producer Anna-Maria Kantarius, and the scenographer Clara Isaksson, amongst others.

Once when I was beaten down on the street I froze. The oldest way to stay alive is to play dead. It's something we share with the jellyfish, and that's what happened to me the time I was attacked. 

At first, I felt shame for not “doing” anything, but then I have slowly understood that all living organisms have different ways of surviving and sometimes playing dead is a way to survive. Instead of being ashamed, I started to explore the process of getting back in contact with my body. This body that while being mine is made of flesh and bones. Bones that 500 million years ago were created when minerals from the Earth’s surface joined together. All these layers and all these times within me. I want to approach these different ways of seeing and experiencing the world. 

What strikes me in hindsight is that, whilst it frightened me, I was also fascinated. There was a desire and a curiosity, maybe lust even, In the middle of that moment of terror. A sweetness from nowhere. 

about the book:

The book voice under, gather a collection of texts which explores and plays with the concept voice under through encounters with examples from my own filmmaking, from other filmmakers, as well as more theoretical renderings of bodies, gender, trans experiences, desire, violence, and trauma. None of the examples I write about in this book are an exact illustration of what voice under is. At the same time, all these examples are attempts that point toward what voice under could be, by gathering a multitude of voices.

voice under is about always returning to the body, a beauty and a desire that do not deny pain, a pain that does not deny desire. Voice under is an exercise in maintaining complexity. Voice under should not, and cannot, be reduced to voice over’s opposite. A voice over can be, but is not necessarily, authoritarian. There are queer voice-overs that double as voice under, such as playful, collective voices of queer and trans communities. The concept of voice under is an attempt to indicate the relation which creates queer expression, the transgender effects of film.

In my investigation of voice under, I explore that which is given space to support or co-create the film. Instead of completely abandoning “the story” as a dominant structure, I wonder if it is possible to see it as a kind of scaffolding. A scaffolding that enables and supports, rather than fixates.

Poetry contains life, resistance and friction in ways that are very concrete. Voice under has to do with a poetic kind of truth. A poetic trans-truth. Constantly alive, constantly bubbling and vibrating, part of a larger collective fabric of accumulated experience.

Finally, the promiscuous storytelling that I experiment with through voice under is linked to what I call “traumaturgy”, which is an attempt to find forms of storytelling that do not cut off the connection between the head and the rest of the body, but work through fear and trauma toward something else. How can dominant cinematic emotional scripts be opened up to make space for a diversity of emotions and experiences? How can fear and trauma be used not to create tension – and by extension harm – but an opportunity to heal, through film?

The book is designed by Mika Kastner and published by Mousse Publishing. It will soon be available at https://www.moussemagazine.it/shop/ and with their stockists.