The voice beyond the word. Polyphonic languages in the films of Érik Bullot

This essay explores the relationships between sound, voice, speech, word and body in the experimental films and performances of French filmmaker and theorist Érik Bullot. Analysing a series of works that draw on linguistic deviations such as stuttering, tongue twisters, invented languages and interspecies communication, we shed light on what we consider Bullot’s poetic and political goals: expanding the boundaries of the word, liberating it from an exclusively semantic function, and enhancing its force as an embodied voice. We argue that his work modulates the correspondences between image and sound, sound and meaning, and body and voice, thereby creating a hybrid space that unsettles the distinctions between fiction and documentary. Moreover, it broadens the conception of cinema toward experiences such as that of “performed séances”, in which speech acts trigger a potential film that remains imaginary or latent

Embodied cognition · Film director · Movie theater · Poetry · Politics · Polyphony · Synesthesia · The Imaginary · Cinema and Media Studies · Digital Media and Philosophy · Sound Studies and Aurality

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