Gabriella D'Costa

The voice of governance, policy, and compliance form a framework over all other frameworks in a society and thus set the tone of the ideal voice to achieve. This particular voice is generally instructional, operational, or legal. Although this voice sounds and reads robotically, it is created by humans to be followed by other humans. The goal is to transcend manual behaviour in favour of automation. A society is not a dichotomy between ventriloquist and ventriloquised; Perpetuating and internalising an automated voice, agents of bureaucracy are themselves ventriloquists and ventriloquised. Agents of bureaucracy are the mouthpiece for a bureaucracy's otherwise acousmatic voice. Their personal inner voice is supplanted by their own ventriloquy and this goes on to ventriloquise a population. Ultimately, there is no master ventriloquist; there are only the ventriloquised ventriloquising. This work seeks personal agency for the bureaucratic agent; to insert a sense of self into this voice, a self which persists despite being ventriloquised.