Reading in Phonetic Symbols

Antiphonal investigates archiving as a process of decontextualization and procedural re-categorization. During the live performance, two participants read texts written in phonetic symbols, without prior knowledge of the content. The result is an improvised vocal archive: each person encounters the other’s language through sound alone, generating exchanges that resemble dialogue but remain untethered from conventional semantic meaning.

The performance foregrounds the temporal and material qualities of language as a recording medium. Phonetic symbols act simultaneously as a site of translation, misrecognition, and sonic interaction. By reading and responding to one another in real time, the participants create a rhythm of reciprocity and iteration, in which the act of reading itself becomes a mode of archiving. In this context, Antiphonal reframes the archive not as a static repository of knowledge but as an emergent, performative system in which meaning is negotiated through sound, timing, and bodily engagement.