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A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying: Anish Kapoor's Marsyas as a Silent Sound Work
This paper examines the relation between visual and acoustic monstrosity as articulated in the myth of the musical contest waged between Apollo and Marsyas. Drawing upon Jean-Pierre Vernant's writing on the gorgon, the paper notes how Marsyas' playing of the instrument is positioned within a mimetics of monstrosity that leads back to Medusa. The paper demonstrates how the punishment of flaying subsequently exacted by the god upon the vanquished satyr has stood as a kind of limit condition of what sight can bear, a thematic that returns us to Medusa herself. Citing Zbigniew Herbert's poem “Apollo and Marsyas” (1961), in which the petrifying visual effect of the gorgon becomes transferred onto Marsyas' howl, a new reading of Anish Kapoor's installation Marsyas (2002) is developed, which reads it—in its overwhelming visual phonicity—as a silent sound work.
Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying: Anish Kapoor's Marsyas as a Silent Sound Work
This paper examines the relation between visual and acoustic monstrosity as articulated in the myth of the musical contest waged between Apollo and Marsyas. Drawing upon Jean-Pierre Vernant's writing on the gorgon, the paper notes how Marsyas' playing of the instrument is positioned within a mimetics of monstrosity that leads back to Medusa. The paper demonstrates how the punishment of flaying subsequently exacted by the god upon the vanquished satyr has stood as a kind of limit condition of what sight can bear, a thematic that returns us to Medusa herself. Citing Zbigniew Herbert's poem “Apollo and Marsyas” (1961), in which the petrifying visual effect of the gorgon becomes transferred onto Marsyas' howl, a new reading of Anish Kapoor's installation Marsyas (2002) is developed, which reads it—in its overwhelming visual phonicity—as a silent sound work.
Voice, Monstrosity and Flaying: Anish Kapoor's Marsyas as a Silent Sound Work
Dorrian, Mark (author)
Architectural Theory Review ; 17 ; 93-104
2012-04-01
12 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
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