Rebalancing the picture-sound relationship: The audiovisual compositions of Lis Rhodes

This chapter explores how experimental filmmaker Lis Rhodes subverts the hegemonic relationship between sound and image across her body of moving image work in order to highlight and address inequitable power structures and the absence of the female voice in music and society. This is achieved on a material level by translating the optical soundtrack into visual presentations in her direct animation Dresden Dynamo (1971-2) and within an expanded, performative context in her audiovisual composition Light Music (1975). Further to this, Rhodes’ later films, Light Reading (1978) and A Cold Draft (1988), continue to rebalance the audiovisual relationship by giving countenance to the female voice, acousmatised from the images presented on screen.