Synesthesiacs aside, it’s not often you see an image and instantly hear it. This powerful shot of Marina Abramović’s 1976 performance Freeing the Voice, however, is so visceral in its intensity—the open mouth, the taut but desperate posture—that it instantly conjures a brutally guttural scream in your head as soon as you see it. The performance was one of three the artist undertook that year in an attempt to cleanse her mind and body, and in typically masochistic-leaning Abramović style, involved her laying down and screaming for three hours until her voice was completely gone. It’s rare to see performance art pieces captured so succinctly in a single frame like this, which is a challenge faced by the curators of a show opening next week entitled Sounds Lasting and Leaving. Running until 14 March at New York’s Luxembourg & Dayan gallery, the show examines the use of sound in art since the early 1900s.
