4 - Being Unable to See and Being Invisible: Unrecognisable, Inaudible Voices in Fish, New Argirópolis and Muta

Summary

In many interviews, Lucrecia Martel has referred to the essential role that sound holds in filmmaking as ‘the inevitable in the experience of watching a film’. In this acoustic experience, voices are also a central component, be they in an articulate form, or more unintelligible expressions. Through different intensities, we can hear the modulations of voices very distinctly, and at other times, almost imperceptibly, as relegated to background noise. The function of the different voices and modulations in Martel's films is particularly relevant when thinking about her aesthetics, and even more so when, as I will do in this chapter, focusing on the intersection and disjunction between visual images and different modulations of voices, whispers, sound distortions and echoes. In what follows, I will discuss the use of the voice in three of Martel's short films of the new millennium, Fish/Pescados (2010), New Argirópolis/Nueva Argirópolis (2010) and Muta (2011). Distorted voices in Fish, whispers intertwined with translatable and non-translatable languages in New Argirópolis and insect-like noises in Muta open up new paths for approaching both what remains invisible and our own inability to see. These three short films might be considered experimental attempts to continue the dialogue between sound and image already initiated in Martel's previous films, a dialogue (or tension) that continues in Zama (2017). Although the emphasis on the acoustic record does not interfere with the importance assigned to images, the sound might be key to grasping what remains outside the frame (or at least opaque or blurry) and to the questioning of the visual regime. I am not referring to the dominant voice nor a voice clearly articulated (where there is also an acoustic regime), but to those manifestations of the voice that are difficult to hear or understand.

DISTORTIONS, ECHOES AND MEANING

Martel has referred insistently to the centrality that water plays in her understanding of sound. The haptic experience is another sensorial aspect privileged when referring to sound (in particular around water), and it accompanies the visual and acoustic experience. ‘Sound reaches us’, says Martel referring to the waves and the vibration transmitted as the bodily experience of sound.