Engaging With the Voice of the Other Through Echoing: Insights From Participatory Art

Involving the voice of others is a major concern for organisations.However, these attempts have often focused on giving voice withoutattending to different abilities to speak or internal power dynamics.Consequently, integrating others’ voices constantly risks appropriation.While some approaches have focused on individual motivations toethically engage, post-individualist studies on inclusion have argued forconsidering embodied modes of relating. I contribute to this literatureby offering the concept of echoing to analyse practices of engagingwith the Other’s voice. Echoing interlinks three dimensions: post-individualism, corporeal generosity and the shared world. With theempirical case of participatory art projects, which produce artworksbased on the Other’s stories, I will demonstrate how ethical encountersbuild on (a) disrupted transmission of the voice, integrating multipleactors and taking on the form of a response, as well as (b) practices ofworld-making, which continuously co-produce the shared world of thisencounter.