Zag Resonances: Esther Ferrer, Sounding at Pleasure

Abstract

Esther Ferrer’s artistic practice emanates from the shared pleasure of making, an expressive need that held the creative seams of the Zaj group together, intermittently, for more than three decades. However, this shared pleasure reveals an imbalance with respect to the figure of Ferrer in the assessment of the contributions of its founding members to sound creation. This article seeks to reconsider this imbalance through an investigation into sounding in Esther Ferrer’s work. To approach this sound-making, I will explore the relations between the body and the voice, alongside her conception of performance, with the aim of tracing some of the fundamental pillars of her production: repetition, duration, spatial and temporal structures, and co-presence. Beyond her actions prefixed in scores, I will delve into the hazardous liberation of sound and silence through a selection of sound works spanning fifty years of her career to track an artistic activity that remains open and in continuous variation.