Enjoying the Sound of It
Although ultrasound has been around as a gynecologic technology for over a half a century, feminists have not adequately engaged with the significance of ultrasound, or literally the sound that exists outside of audibility, as a framework for reproductive rights and body politics. What if we turned our attention to the idea of the vagina’s own (ultra)sound—sound beyond audibility or comprehensibility—as an alternative to the visibility of the uterus? What if we developed a methodology to receive and a theory to interpret such sounds? Although choreographer Arianne Hoffmann’s solo from the evening-length performance Bricklayers with a Sense of Humor was made two years before the 2012 Virginia transvaginal ultrasound controversy, the dance certainly engages with the issues raised by that proposed legislation, and suggests ways that we could approach vaginal sound as a feminist orientation.33
The title of the 50-minute work suggests an attention to labor and laborers doing something that is unexpected of them. The dancers’ actions are simple and often matter-of-fact: they run, they walk, they form patterns on the stage, but with a wink they generously let the audience in. Their “uniforms”—loud 1970s, long-sleeved, button-up polyester shirts paired with more subdued slacks, all in neutral tones —are hideous, they are funny, and they are not terribly flattering. But we are not laughing at them in the audience; they are leading us through the joke.
About two-thirds of the way through the dance, Hoffmann enters the stage, walking on to formal, slightly ponderous strains of music. She matter-of-factly picks up a handheld microphone lying on the floor, left behind by a previous dancer, and unceremoniously yanks the cable from the base, silencing the music. We might think that she were a tech person if not for her costume, which matches the other dancers’ 1970s get-up, and her presentation—she faces the audience straight on and eyes them coolly for a moment before taking the mic, and then the cord, to the side of the room. By silencing the music and clearing the microphone, she suggests to the audience that she will be asking them to listen to something else, something other than music or the human voice.
Having cleared the stage of props and sound, Hoffmann takes her place in the spotlight facing the audience. She stands for a moment watching the audience, gathering their attention, then sharply flips her right fist up the side of her body, hitting her mark: fist over her head, elbow sharply bent to the side. She follows this gesture with a sharp lift of her left shoulder and bend of her knee. Her chin rises, too. Determined. Challenging. “Pay attention!” her body orders us. She repeats the brief phrase, this time more languorously. As she does so, we begin to notice that the vague rustling we have been hearing is perfectly coordinated with her movements. Aha! She’s wearing a wireless microphone battery pack. But where is the mic? The initial phrase is repeated over and over again, with differences. The original sharpness is replaced by smoother, sustained movements; the fist loosens up, revealing the palm and then all five fingers. The small knee bend eventually develops into a reaching step. The sound—it’s still there; louder or softer depending on the movement. Hoffmann appears at times to enjoy the sound she is producing: shifting her weight back and forth, bending deeply and stretching tall as if to see how the sound shifts. A slow relevé onto the balls of her feet produces a soft, sustained sound, as if fingers were gently brushing over the surface of a mic. But where is it coming from? As if to address our collective question, just over three minutes into the solo, Hoffmann begins to gently knock on different parts of her body. Knees—a distant thump. Side of the hip—louder! Knees, hips. Marco Polo! Ribs, upper back. Faint, getting colder. She’s listening, too. “What parts of my body want to be heard today?” Front of the hip, stomach … OH! That knock was a big fist on a large wooden door! That’s it! She pauses, checks that the audience is with her, and knocks again. Lower pelvis. Where is that mic? Oh. Ohhhhhhhh. Hand hovers over the spot as if to knock one more time, we anticipate it, but Hoffmann takes off instead into vigorous, knee-lifting, creaking, rustling circles around the room. “You know where the sound is coming from now, or you suspect. Watch me. Listen to me. Listen again. Listen to what you can’t see.”
The solo lasts a brief five minutes before Hoffmann leaves the stage and the other dancers/laborers return. What is striking about it is Hoffmann’s pleasure and ease with moving, and the connection of her kinesthetic labor to what she calls her “body soundscape,” produced by amplifying her normally inaudible vagina. While Bricklayers may call to mind Carolee Schneemann’s groundbreaking 1975 performance art piece, Interior Scroll, in which the artist stood naked on a table, reading from a long, narrow piece of paper as she pulled it from her vagina, there are key differences between these two vaginal performances.34 Interior Scroll is focused on making the internal externally comprehensible by putting the vagina into written words and then vocalizing them. Hoffmann’s solo, on the other hand, offers a model for how the technology of sound can be used with the vagina to produce discourse on an entirely new register—one that rejects the visibility intended by the transvaginal ultrasound bill, and the comprehensibility attempted through Congressional testimony. Instead, the Bricklayers solo propounds vaginal sound for its own sake, and even for the sake of pleasure.
Hoffmann’s solo also functions differently than Eve Ensler’s popular play, The Vagina Monologues (1996). The Monologues are celebratory, reclaiming, sex-positive. Since 1998, the play has been at the center of the V-Day movement to end violence against women through community performances that benefit services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, becoming an extension of Take Back the Night, only more like Take Back My Body. The Monologues promote pleasure and confidence, but are also settings where women can voice what has previously been unspeakable in public. While The Vagina Monologues have been performed by noted actresses and celebrities, one of the most powerful aspects of the performances is the way that communities of women have taken up the performances and made them their own. They have been a vehicle for women to speak their personal stories (even if speaking someone else’s words). While the Monologues have enjoyed enormous success and exposure (over 5,800 volunteer-led performances in 2012 alone35 ), they have not, however, served to significantly shift the debate about women’s reproductive health, women’s sexuality, or control of women’s bodies in the United States. Almost 15 years into V-Day, new and previously unthinkable legislation, aimed at shaming or inconveniencing women into not having an abortion is being introduced all across the country.
What makes the solo in Hoffmann’s Bricklayers different is the way that the vagina is sounding in a previously incomprehensible register. Rather than translating the vagina into spoken or written text, the dance is choreographed to let the vagina “sound off” on its own terms. The vagina’s movements and activities, usually outside the range of audibility, are here amplified and projected, not for politicians or policy moves, but simply for the pleasure of moving and taking action. In a political context where the uterus is subject to governmental control, and technologies of visibility are used as a coercive rhetoric of life, Hoffmann’s solo suggests the productive potential of vaginal sound to redirect contemporary political rhetoric and action about women’s bodies and reproduction.
I opened this essay with a discussion of the Virginia transvaginal ultrasound bill in order to tease out the significance of the vagina and sound signaled by the controversy stirred up by the legislation. Now, in lieu of a conclusion, I return to the protest that sent the controversial bill into the national spotlight as a way of gesturing to how we might apply a politics of sound. The organizers of the protest wrote, “The [Virginia] Capitol ground rules say that we cannot assemble, hold signs, chant, yell or protest. We think silence in the face of this struggle and their unconstitutional rules presents the strongest response to their assault on women.”36 To put it another way: if written and spoken words can be disallowed, then we must act in another register. The Virginia women who organized the decisive February 20, 2012 action against the transvaginal ultrasound bill recognized this fact. While they called their action “Speak Loudly with Silence,” I suggest that we can understand the protest not as an absence of sound, but rather as an invitation to sound differently. The action disengaged from expected behavior, just as Hoffmann unplugged her music and voice amplification. This unanticipated move forced its audience (legislators, but also the media) to listen intently to something they could not previously hear. Those like Brown, Byrum, and Fluke who, as discussed above, attempted to speak through foreseen channels were shut down before they even began, in a move that communicated, “We think we know what you will say, and we don’t want to hear it.” In contrast, the silence/inaudible sound of the protestors caused such a disturbance that not only could the legislature not vote on the transvaginal ultrasound bill that day, but they were forced to alter the wording two days later to remove the transvaginal mandate.
Hoffmann’s dance and the Virginia protest are just two examples of the potential of transvaginal sound. Sound as framework invites us to think of embodiment and the boundaries of the body differently, both the body that emits the sound waves and the one that receives them. Transvaginal sound travels through viscera and bounces off bone, exceeding the boundaries of the skin. It makes an impact, invisibly.
The author would like to acknowledge Agatha Beins, Lindsay Brandon Hunter, and Frank Welte for their kind assistance.
- Arianne Hoffman, Bricklayers with a Sense of Humor, performed 5 Mar. 2010, Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica, CA. See https://vimeo.com/44448155. [↩]
- Interior Scroll: http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/interiorscroll.html. [↩]
- “About V-Day,” VDay, available at http://www.vday.org/about. [↩]
- “Call for Action: 4) Why a Silent Protest,” Speak Loudly with Silence for Virginia Women (a silent protest) #F20, available at https://www.facebook.com/events/187137214719838/. [↩]
