Erik Bünger "The Girl That Never Was"
2014


In 2008 an American researcher rediscovers the lost traces of the first recorded voice ever: the 148-year-old voice of a little girl singing a French lullaby. One year later another researcher reveals that what the fragment actually contains is the voice of a man. This story becomes the starting point for an exploration into the contradictory nature of the human voice and the power of the human voice to defy any conventional categories of truth and falsity, past and present, man and woman. The more we try to shut her voice out the more persistent her song becomes.


Erik Bünger is an artist, writer and composer. His work investigates the relationship between language and concepts such as 'voice', 'body', 'image' and 'nature'. In lecture performances, videos, texts and musical compositions he explores how such concepts, by referring to something mute and unspeakable beyond the reach of language, become central voids around which our reality is built up. His lecture performances, videos and musical compositions have been presented around the world in venues such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Wellcome Collection in London, KUMU in Tallinn, The Lincoln Center in New York, KW in Berlin and The Curitiba Biennial in Brazil. In 2018, his debut book, The Elephant Who Was a Rhinoceros was published by RpB Verlag (Cologne).