In this lecture, artist, writer, musician and performer Siôn Parkinson explores the olfactory connections between language, the voice, and excrement. Drawing from his new book, Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change The Way We Listen (Sternberg), Parkinson examines how the vocal apparatus—encompassing the gut, lungs, throat, mouth and nose—can be used to invoke the multisensory qualities of shit, including its smell.

In Parkinson’s musical framework, shit-talking is more than mere invective; it echoes historical rituals like flinging excrement in battle, establishing a lineage from primal aggression to the types of verbal combat heard in diss tracks. He goes on to draw parallels between shit-talking and the word cacophony — etymologically ‘shit voice’ — exploring how some sounds and music can conjure in the listener feelings of ambivalence, where delight and disgust are essentially smeared.

Referencing the role of excrement in early language development, as well as the mouth music of Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins), the vocal innovations of Meredith Monk, and the unintelligible, “dirty” lyrics of the raucous R&B classic Louie Louie, Parkinson argues that the shit-talker plays a vital function in art, and the health of the body politic more broadly. By performing an essential discharge of language’s excesses, the shit-talker offers a form of raw expression that reveals the messy side of human vocality—and perhaps, a truth about the originary odours of language itself.

Siôn Parkinson is a visual artist, composer, performer and writer investigating our sensory relationship with the more-than-human world. His first book Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change The Way We Listen is published by Sternberg Press. Siôn is a research fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where he is exploring the olfactory heritage of fungi—mushroom smells that are meaningful to individuals or communities due to their association with significant places, objects or traditions. Originally trained as a sculptor, Siôn received his PhD in sound studies from the University of Leeds, where he was an Amanda Burton scholar. He is based in Dundee, Scotland.

Copies of Siôn’s new book, Stinkhorn, will be available to buy after the event, priced at £26.

Siôn Parkinson, Stinkhorn: How Nature's Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen

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