Tonfilm is one of VALIE EXPORT’s Expanded Cinema works, which dispense with the illusionary devices of cinema and anchor the cinematic experience in real space and real time. The concept paper for Tonfilm proposes manipulating the voice using technological means: a photo-electric amplifier is placed in the glottis by surgery and connected with a light-sensitive resistor on the ear. Depending on the intensity of the light, more or less current flows to the amplifier; the sound becomes louder or softer. This life-sound film, says EXPORT, proceeds in such a way that people have to yell terribly at midday, start losing their voices towards evening and are completely mute at night. Shifting cinema into the body addresses the structures of desire that this medium uses to socialize. Humanity screaming itself senseless while at the mercy of outside influences is an image that encapsulates the society of control against which EXPORT’s Expanded Cinema works are directed.