Roland The magazine of the ICA’s visual art programme Issue 1 / May 2009

Featuring A GUIDE TO

INTRODUCTION 4 EXHIBITION 6 RESIDENCIES 8 PERFORMANCES & PRESENTATIONS 10 WORKSHOPS & DISCUSSIONS 14 CONFERENCE 15 FILM PROGRAMME 16 reSOURCES 16 PARTICIPANTS 17 PRACTICAL INFORMATION 23

Plus texts and other contributions by Malcolm Goldstein, Ernest Robson, Will Holder, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Ricardo Basbaum, Anne Karpf, Susan Blackmore, Konstantin Raudive,Will Bradley, Gertrude Stein, Joan La Barbara, Marc Hatzfeld, Marshall Mcluhan, Mikhail Yampolsky, Chris Mann, Hélène Cixous, BS Johnson, Jay Chung and Q Takedi Maeda, Paul Virno, Shigeru Matsui The ICA is pleased to present the inaugural issue of Roland, a magazine that is being produced to accompany each new block of our visual arts programming. We are particularly excited to launch this new venture alongside , a month-long season of artworks and live events that addresses that central feature of human life— the act of speech. The programme, most of which is free, will activate the ICA during both daytime and evening, and is being presented in our Galleries, Theatre and other spaces. has been curated by Will Holder with Richard Birkett and Jennifer Thatcher, and features over a hundred participants, including artists, performers and others whose activities centre on speech and vocal performance—such as linguists, speech thera- pists and voiceover artists. The first half of the magazine gives details for and other ICA activities, while the second half provides background material.

3 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / introduction

AN INTRODUCTION TO and discussions that will occur in an event space in the Lower Gallery, as well as a conference held in the Theatre, and together the programme invites the audience to con- sider the social and cultural adaptation of the voice. The voice is often perceived to be ‘the lever of thought’ a wide range of resources are linked to , —a powerful tool for negotiation, for the wilful disruption including this magazine. The content within this publica- of the status quo, and for the articulation of social charac- tion is intended to create another space for contemplation ter. And yet, despite this knowledge, we can all be suscep- and production, with texts that address the particularities tible to the manipulations of political oratory, corporate of speech and the negotiation of meaning around an art- motivational tactics and evangelical persuasion. The ICA work or idea. The ICA’s website expands on this research, has long been a site for heated exchange, through conver- and our new Reading Room is presenting a number of sation, oration and performance, and the voices of artists, archives of spoken word recordings, providing valuable critics, theorists and audience alike have contributed to a research material, and highlighting the manner in which sense of constant articulation and production. conversation about cultural practice can encourage criti- is a month-long programme of events, displays, residen- cal honesty. cies and workshops that directly address speech as a tool The ICA has a history of experimental, inter-dis- and as a medium to produce and negotiate meaning and ciplinary and artist-led programming, and value, both within the field of art and across other areas is a part of this trajectory. The core of the programme of life such as politics, business and entertainment. has been curated by the artist, writer and designer many contemporary artists employ the spoken word Will Holder, perhaps best known as the editor of the as a medium or reference point, and includes journal F.R.DAVID. He has been working with Rich- an exhibition of speech-based works in the Lower Gallery ard Birkett, Assistant Curator and Jennifer Thatcher, and other spaces. At the same time the Upper Gallery and Director of Talks at the ICA. The programme is being Theatre are being used as a location for a series of artists’ produced with the help and support of The London residencies, events that are open to the public and in which Consortium, a multi-disciplinary graduate programme participants will research, rehearse and produce new work, in humanities and cultural studies, and an organisation laying bare the function of conversation and collective with close links to the ICA. Such ties to the world of negotiation. The Lower Gallery and Theatre will host study and research sit well with the nature of the ICA, performances and presentations by artists, musicians and and it is in this spirit that aims to harness F.R.DAVID, Autumn 2008 This particular issue (“A is for ‘orses”) others, a programme that anticipates a rich array of expe- speech as a vehicle that drives the production, sharing looks at the process of editing through riences. also includes a number of workshops and negotiation of knowledge. speech and conversation

4 5 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Exhibition

Exhibition

The exhibition is staged across Providing a striking backdrop to the Lower Gallery space is a wall painting by Adam Pendleton, in a number of spaces and platforms, and which a sentence has been dissolved to leave behind operates around and amongst the events single letters. Alluding to experimental poetry and conceptual art, Pendleton’s atomisation of and residencies that occur throughout the language explores the boundaries between object, month. It features artworks that investi- speech, translation and meaning. There is a similar experience in Seth Price’s audio work, in which gate the expression of language through speech is reduced to a repetitive, spectral noise— the sound of the voice, or in some cases this is the soundtrack to Price’s work Digital Video Effect: “Holes” (2003), extracted and separated from through its absence. In the Lower Gallery its associated imagery. and Concourse there are works by Pierre pierre Bismuth and Manuel Saiz utilise the work of the dubbing artist as a means to consider the Bismuth, Ryan Gander, Beatrice Gibson ownership and authority of speech and language. with Jamie McCarthy, Adam Pendleton, Bismuth’s video counteracts an imperialist notion of language and universal understanding, whilst Falke Pisano, Seth Price, Manuel Saiz and Saiz’ succinct work uses the activity of the dubbing Frances Stark; the Reading Room includes artist as a parallel to his own practice. The place of the artist’s voice, as producer, collaborator or a work by Mark Wilsher; while the Upper initiator, is also the subject of Frances Stark’s work, Gallery will feature, in turn, works by a Powerpoint presentation in which she reflects on the experience of collaborating on an exhibition with Robert Ashley and Robert Filliou. artist Mark Leckey. Using a rhythmic progression of short texts as a substitute for her own voice, Stark ponders the nature of collaboration, the efficacy of conversation, and the status of the final ‘product’ (in her words, “together we have formed nothing”). Ryan Gander and Falke Pisano’s graphic works consider the position of the artist in relation to the artwork. Gander creates a reproducible transfer Robert Ashley Perfect Lives, 1984 of three sketches from his notebook, each outlining Still from video the same proposed (but unrealised) video work, in which Theo and Vincent Van Gogh conduct a conversation while sketching. The trajectory of the by Paul Elliman, accessible on the ICA website and reincarnation integrates sound and text within an missing artwork is clearly plotted, yet its realisation documented in the Lower Gallery. This ‘curriculum’ all-encompassing composition, driven by Ashley’s is replaced by the sketches, exposing Gander’s own of songs, readings, radio documentaries and phone- unique spoken-word delivery. procedure. Pisano’s diagrammatic prints expose a ins aims to reflect the impact of writing and literacy in the second half of May Ashley’s installation similar loop, one in which shifting abstract sculptural on speech, and the nature of the human voice as will be replaced by a group of video works, forms are conceived directly in relation to written re-embodied in technology. produced in the late 1970s, by Fluxus artist Robert and spoken language, implying an ongoing and The relationship between the voice and musical Filliou. Grouped under the title From Political to morphing production of meaning. structure is a recurring theme within . Poetical Economy, these works employ poetry to video documentation of a performance by Beatrice Gibson and Jamie McCarthy’s audio work pursue modes of everyday research. Filliou proposes Mark Wilsher is situated amongst the archival uses open compositional structures to re-imagine the a state of unknowing, a general spirit of enquiry in Mark Wilsher recordings in the Reading Room. Part of an ongoing calling out of routes by trainee London cab drivers. which the communication of information is replaced King, 2008 Documentation of performance series in which the artist publicly recites famous Meanwhile, in one of the ICA Upper Galleries for by exploratory dialogue. political speeches, the work forms parallels with the first two weeks of , a sequence of TV the historical material present in the room, but also monitors shows Perfect Lives, a seven-part TV opera traces a personal attempt to inhabit iconic material. by composer Robert Ashley. A ground-breaking The recording of the voice is also explored in a work work, both visually and aurally, this opera about

6 7 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / residencies

residencies castillo/corrales, Melanie Gilligan, Fia Backström, Stella Capes and Plus Minus Ensemble are all in residence at the ICA during May, developing projects in which production is publicly framed, and in which discussion, presentation and scripting become part of the production process. Within the varying approaches of these artists there is a sense of imminence, and the transposition of knowledge and language into object. The residencies are based in a number of the ICA’s spaces (see below) and are open to the public during normal ICA gallery hours (with exceptions as noted below).

castillo/corrales Stella Capes 6—17 May 24—26 May 12—6pm Upper Gallery, free Theatre, free castillo/corrales is a collective of artists, curators and writers (Oscar Tuazon, Thomas Boutoux, Stella Capes works across a variety of media, Francois Piron, Benjamin Thorel and Boris Gobille) including video, performance and sculpture, that specialises in creating discursive environments, generating situations that explore the vulnerability staged at its own exhibition space and bookshop and pathos of human endeavour. The artist often in Paris as well as elsewhere. For their scrutinises the relationship between performer and audience, and as part of her residency residency castillo/corrales will invite guests to she is shooting a new video work, in a process that discuss the future of the non-profit and artist-led will be fully accessible to ICA visitors. This piece, sectors of the art world. What are the alternative entitled The Recital—Voices From Five Films, Stella Capes models for art spaces and organisations? How do The Performance, 2007 employs professional opera singers to re-interpret Still from video we develop artistic communities? How do these screams sampled from horror films. By selecting communities relate to processes of social change and moments of trauma that span cinematic history, this urban gentrification? And what is the impact of the perverse act of translation conveys a social history Plus Minus Ensemble market, including the current economic crisis? All of the horror movie—and of sources of fear. The conversations will feed back into the development of 26—31 May 1—8pm an ongoing archive, held at the Parisian space. final five-screen video work produced through this process will be exhibited at the ICA in August 2009. Lower Gallery, free 31 May 7pm Theatre, Free, booking required Melanie Gilligan Fia Backström Plus Minus Ensemble is a group of musicians 18 24 — May 25 31 committed to the presentation of avant-garde and Upper Gallery, free — May experimental traditions in classical music, and which Upper Gallery, free performs new compositions as well as revisiting the Writing provides the backbone for all of Melanie Agency and the construction of subjectivity are works of seminal modern composers. Plus Minus Gilligan’s work. In her performances and videos ac- explored in the work of Fia Backström, in which the is in residence at the ICA during the final week tors deliver scripts that are by turns literary, evoca- of tive, humorous and political. These works blend artist plays with modes of political, corporate and , conducting several days of open pedagogical address. For her residency at the ICA rehearsals (with evening recitals from 7 to 8pm), narrative, dramatic and informative modes in order Studies 31 to communicate complex histories and ideas. Dur- Backström is continuing a series entitled before a concert on Sunday May. The sessions in Leadership. The latest installment, The Golden focus on the use of language and the voice within ing her residency Gilligan will develop a script and Voice rehearse with an actor, culminating in a final video. , addresses language as a motivational tool, particular pieces, as well as exploring the manner excavating the tropes and tricks of public speaking. in which conversation and negotiation filter the The residency features a series of presentations collective interpretation of musical notation. The and screenings set in a staged environment. The rehearsal of works by Laurence Crane, Tom Johnson meetings provide the random building blocks for an and Tim Parkinson, amongst others, will define the end product of persuasive delivery. repertoire for the final performance.

8 9 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / performances & presentations

Performances & presentations The programme features a wide range of performances and presentations. Those originated by Robert Ashley, Chris Mann, Anne- James Chaton & Andy Moor, Alex Waterman and Joan La Barbara exem- plify a mode of vocal experimentation with links to Dada and Fluxus. Performed speech as physical form, and as politicised gesture, is explored further in events by Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti, Sharon Hayes, Jimmy Robert and Ian White, Dexter Sinister and Stephen Sutcliffe. also addresses the relationship between the aural and the audience, within events organised by Terry Smith and School of Sound.

Robert Ashley Jeremiah Day / 6 May 7pm Simone Forti 5 4 Theatre £6 / £ concs / £ members 7 May 7pm Robert Ashley has been an operatic innovator Lower Gallery, Free 1960 since the s, and is a hugely influential figure This evening’s performance is an improvised col- in the contemporary music scene. Combining laboration between Jeremiah Day and Simone Forti. electroacoustic experimentation and extended vocal Day’s work spans photography, installation and techniques, his works centre on the delivery of the story-telling, and employs intensive research to spoken word, and often echo the patter of a salesman establish connections between himself and places of or evangelist. Densely layered with narrative and public significance; while Forti is an artist with links social character, they form a timeless and sometimes to the origins of post-modern dance in New York in surreal portrait of the American voice. The ICA 1960 is hosting the UK premiere of Foreign Experiences, the early s, and whose practice has more recently Robert Mapplethorpe involved poetic writing. Day studied improvisa- Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, 1975 directed by Robert Ashley and performed by Sam 2007 See: Jimmy Robert and Ian White Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert. The piece follows tion with Forti in Los Angeles, and in the two the story of Don Jr., an academic who moves collaborated on an exhibition at Project Arts Centre, with his family from the Midwest of America to Dublin. Their performance tonight extends the latter artists’ interviews, and now the subject of a book, the ICA, entitled Word/Play, is an investigation into project, and is accompanied by a discussion with Speaking of Art, Four Decades of Art in Conversation. the spoken word as raw material, and includes pre- California, and who gradually slips into a paranoid 8 world of government intrigue and mysterious Fred Dewey (director of Beyond Baroque Literary On May Furlong will be in conversation with art sentations and works from artists Jordan Baseman, revolutionaries. Art Center, Los Angeles), and the launch of a publi- critic, writer and exhibition organiser Mel Gooding. Oswaldo Macia and Mark Wayman. cation on the collaboration, produced by Project. On 14 May a new Audio Arts interview, featuring Kutlug Ataman and conducted by Jean Wainwright, will be recorded live at the ICA. Jimmy Robert Audio Arts & Ian White 8 7 In conversation: May pm Speakeasy 11 May 7pm Theatre, Free, booking 9 May 12—7.30pm Theatre, Free, booking required required Lower Gallery and Theatre, Free 14 3 “It is not by painting that photography touches art, Interview: May pm Speakeasy is an ongoing project initiated by artist but by theatre” (Roland Barthes). For this evening’s Lower Gallery, Free Terry Smith, an informal experiment in the public event Jimmy Robert and Ian White will perform Audio Arts is the brainchild of William Furlong, presentation of artists’ work and ideas that has ex- Marriage à la Mode et Cor Anglais, a work that com- a figure who—through his interest in sound and plored areas including dance and movement as well bines and re-presents image (in particular a Robert the voice—has been highly influential in the as more conventional media. Bucking the conven- Mapplethorpe photograph of Robert Wilson and development of expanded notions of sculpture. For tions of the ‘artist’s talk’, Speakeasy events aim to Philip Glass), text and music; and that uses various the past 35 years Furlong has published Audio Arts explore aspects of artists’ working processes in an coordinates, including artificiality, posing, mortality Sam Ashley in Robert Ashley’s Concrete, 2007 Magazine, generating a comprehensive archive of informal and interactive environment. This event at and repetition. The work was developed for theatre 10 11 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / performances & presentations performance, and was originally produced by STUK Kunstcentrum, Belgium. This is the second perfor- School of Sound mance work by Robert and White to explore the line 16 May 7pm between an image and a related set of movements, and Theatre, Free, booking required both relates to and differs from 6 things we couldn’t do, but can do now, performed at Tate Britain in 2004 School of Sound is an organisation that encourages . and explores the creative use of sound within the arts, through regular symposia and specialist workshops. This evening’s event, dubbed a ‘listening’, provides Stephen Sutcliffe an opportunity for the audience to be physically 15 7 immersed in soundscapes without the distraction May pm of imagery. Collective listening is a relatively rare Lower Gallery, Free, booking phenomenon, and the programme, focusing on the required recorded voice as a disembodied entity, moves from Stephen Sutcliffe uses television and sound archives narrative to documentary to surreal abstraction. to create layered videos loaded with wry humour and poetry. Referencing cultural icons, particularly ones from the literary and theatrical worlds, the art- ist addresses ideas of performance and intellectual Sharon Hayes self-doubt. As part of his event Sutcliffe 16 & 17 May 2pm presents excerpts from TV archives held at the BFI Offsite, Free Sharon Hayes and elsewhere, as well as from his own personal Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You Think It’s Time for Love?, 2007 Sharon Hayes’ contribution to is a series Documentation of performance, New York City archive of videotapes collated since he was a child. of performances staged on the streets of London, The selection has a particular focus on talk shows including a work in which she speaks to an absent and interviews, and reflects Sutcliffe’s fascination lover from a street corner, inserting the language with the construction of public personae. Honing in of private correspondence into public speech. The on figures such as novelist Christopher Isherwood, artist’s recent work has explored the relationship Anne-James Chaton & as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Robert Ashley and he presents an analysis of public moments in which between personal and political desire, and in these Andy Moor / Chris Mann / Philip Glass, and is a highly regarded figure in both value systems collide, and in which an artist’s per- works she is interested in provoking questions about the art and music worlds. La Barbara is a pioneer sonal life is imposed on their work. what is ‘acceptable’ in love and what is ‘unspeakable’ Alex Waterman of expanded vocal techniques, exploring the bodily in public. Drawing on the history of the Gay Libera- 19 7 mechanics of sound making, including the dissolu- May pm tion of spoken and sung language into ululations tion Movement, and on the current moment, Hayes’ Theatre, Free, booking required performances explore notions of free speech and find and glottal clicks. This event at the ICA is a rare new complexity in such classic slogans as ‘make love This event brings together live performances by opportunity to hear La Barbara perform a group of not war’. For information on performance locations four figures who experiment with sound poetry and her seminal works, pieces that immerse the voice in visit the ICA website. musical structure, tracing a lineage from Dada and the conditions of the body. Fluxus. Poet Anne-James Chaton and guitarist Andy Moor have frequently collaborated, most recently on an album that tells the story of a journalist Ben Cain through his articles and broadcasts. The Australian Dexter Sinister 23 May 3pm sound poet Chris Mann—who spent time research- 30 May 7pm Lower Gallery, Free ing information theory, and defined a territory Theatre, Free, booking required known as ‘compositional linguistics’—is known for Ben Cain is primarily involved in the production performances that involve the reading of dense texts Dexter Sinister is a New York-based collaboration of installations, vinyl records, performances and at great speed. They are joined by the composer, founded by designers Stuart Bailey and David Rein- printed matter, which deal with the convergence musician and curator Alex Waterman, whose work furt. The duo have been described as pamphleteers, of theatre and documentary information, with a explores experimental music and its relationship to and ‘publish’ work in a variety of ways, including particular interest in facilitating and highlighting language and notation. a ‘just-in-time’ print workshop in the Lower East the viewer’s role in the emergence of a subject. Side. Dexter Sinister explores the intersection of The work tends to be formed through interplay of design, editing, publishing and distribution, and for saying and doing, of production and description; it is presenting True Mirror Microfiche, a where specific outcomes remain unstable and illusive. Joan La Barbara work that extends this assimilation and dissemina- Recent projects have increasingly focussed on sight 31 4 tion of ideas. The piece is a lecture, with overhead and speech in the process of creating work that May pm projection, performed by a 20-strong cast, and the oscillates between the visible and non-visible, the Lower Gallery, Free event will replicate, revise and recast two previous Stills from Stephen Sutcliffe’s television archive Dirk Bogarde, Rusell Harty, BBC, date unknown physical and the imagined, with this afternoon’s Composer, performer and sound artist Joan La Bar- performances, staged in New York at The Kitchen Anthony Burgess, Face to face, BBC, 1989 performance developing these concerns. bara has worked since the 1970s with composers such and the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2008. 12 13 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / workshops, discussions & conference

Workshops & discussions Doublespeak Effective Speaking 22 May 3pm in Groups features workshops on public speaking, political chants and Lower Gallery, Free 28 May 3—6pm the social nuances of speech choices, as well as discussions on sign lan- This discussion centres on the notion of ‘double- Upper Gallery, Free, booking guage and the notion of doublespeak. These events draw on sociologi- speak’, in which language is used to conceal and required manipulate. Generated through ongoing doctorate This workshop is for people wishing to develop their cal and neurological research, as well as personal testimony, and explore research at The London Consortium, the event looks confidence when speaking to groups. It is based on how and why our voices can obtain weight as personal or public tools. at doublespeak within the context of a number of the concept of ‘speaking circles’, a relationship- different disciplines and conditions. The discussion based approach developed by American speech will be recorded and broadcast at a later date on the coach Lee Glickstein. The method can, even in a arts radio station Resonance FM, as part of a series short space of time, give participants a high level entitled The Thread. The latter is a collaboration of support that encourages them to take risks and between Resonance and The London Consortium, develop their own speaking style. The workshop is and aims to present informed discussion of run by Rachel Everard and Carolyn Cheasman, who contemporary society and culture in an accessible are respected speech and language therapists based at audio format. City Lit, London. They Give Themselves Latin American Away Every Time They Political Chants Open Their Mouths 18 May 3—5pm 12 & 21 May 3—5pm Lower Gallery, Free Lower Gallery, Free This workshop, led by artist Leandro Cardoso, is rooted in Chilean politics of the 1970s, and invites its This workshop (staged twice in consecutive weeks) participants to come together and chant, re-enacting uses archival recordings, as well as contributions historical events with their own voices. The Marx- from the audience, to explore what our linguistic ist Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile choices say about us. The event is led by Jonnie in 1970, and in the three years before it was toppled Robinson, Lead Content Specialist for Sociolinguis- by a coup d’etat his government restructured the tics at the British Library, and responsible for the country’s financial and industrial infrastructure. One latter’s online dialect archive, which ranges from result of the period was a flowering of the culture Conference surveys of vernacular speech in the 1950s to more of street politics, including political speeches and contemporary studies. As part of this workshop chants. Drawing on TV footage from the period, this Robinson will explore the development of dialects workshop considers the performance of protest and and the social changes that inform this process. the collective physical expression of language. Our Speaking Selves 17 May 2—7pm Theatre The Vocal Knot £6 / £5 concs / £4 members 13 May 7pm This half-day conference plots a course from the Lower Gallery, Free, booking neurological basis of speech to its social and histori- required cal role, taking in our culture’s obsession with vocal performance. With presentations and demonstra- This panel discussion brings together philosopher tions from Professor Sophie Scott (group leader of Jonathan Rée, artist Louise Stern and sign language the Speech Communication Group at the Institute interpreter Oliver Pouliot, and is chaired by Steven of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College Connor (Professor of Modern Literature and London), Anne Karpf (sociologist and author of Theory, Birkbeck College). Taking Rée’s studies The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Tal- into the social history of deafness and muteness as ent), Professor Deborah Cameron (University of a starting point, the discussion investigates the sup- Oxford, author of The Myth of Mars and Venus), Dr posed primacy of the voice within human communi- Laura Wright (historical sociolinguist, University of cation, and considers how sign language operates as Still from television footage of Chilean protest Cambridge), actor Julian Rhind-Tutt and voiceover Anne Karpf an alternative linguistic system. The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent artist Eve Karpf. Bloomsbury, 2006 This talk will be signed in British Sign Language by Roger Beeson.

14 15 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Film programme, resources & participants

Film programme Resources Participants

The Shout The ICA’s Reading Room and website Robert Ashley Croatia (2007). He has also castillo/corrales 10 2 2 5 Robert Ashley is an American appeared in group exhibitions at castillo/corrales is a shared office May pm, Cinema , £ are both hosting a variety of resources composer known for his work in Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria space, bookshop and collectively Jerzy Skolimowski directs this haunting and dream- that link to . new forms of opera. Staged ver- (2007) and Juliette Jongma run gallery in Paris, initiated in like tale of wandering musician Crossley (Alan sions of his operas, including the Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands 2007 by a group of artists, cura- Bates), who intrudes on the life of a young composer The Reading Room is a new space at the monumental opera tetralogy Now (2005). tors, critics and writers. The core (John Hurt) and his wife. Having convinced the ICA, and for it is being used to present a Eleanor’s Idea, have premiered group comprises Oscar Tuazon, couple that his voice has the power to kill others, the number of speech-based archives. The latter include and toured around the world. Professor Deborah Thomas Boutoux, François musician finds himself the subject of the composer’s the archive of Audio Arts, which has been collecting Ashley wrote and directed Dust Cameron Piron, Benjamin Thorel and Boris interviews with artists since it was founded by Wil- for premiere at the Kanagawa Arts growing obsession. [Dir Jerzy Skolimowski, UK liam Furlong in 1970 Deborah Cameron, a linguist, Gobille. Exhibitions and events at 1978, 86 mins] s; a link with New York-based Foundation in Yokohama, and currently holds the Rupert the gallery include Danh Vo Jay internet radio station ARTonAIR.org; and the ICA’s Celestial Excursions for the Berlin Murdoch Chair of Language and Chung Takeki Maeda (2009) own talks’ archive, which is held at The British Festival and Hebbel Theater, Ber- Communication at the University and The Meaning of Everything, Library. The Reading Room is situated off the Bar, lin. These two operas and the new although for the duration of of Oxford. Her main research Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri it can also be work Made Out of Concrete were interests are the effects of social (2008). accessed from the Lower Gallery. performed at La MaMa E.T.C., and cultural change on language The material hosted by the ICA New York in January 2009. attitudes and language use, and Anne-James Chaton website includes: research materials assembled by the the relationship of language to season’s curators; audio and visual documentation and Andy Moor Fia Backström gender and sexuality. She has Anne-James Chaton is a sound of events in the programme; audio material from published numerous books, ARTonAIR.org; and contributions from Born in Stockholm, Fia Backström poet. He co-directs, with the duet is an artist now living and working including The Myth of Mars and Kristoff K.Roll, the festival of participants. in New York. She recently had a Venus (2007) and On Language sound arts, Sonorities. He has solo exhibition, Studies in Leader- and Sexual Politics (2006). been a long term collaborator of ship (a family affair), at the St the Dutch free rock’n’roll group, Louis Contemporary Art Museum Stella Capes The Ex. Andy Moor has been a The Shout (1978) (2009). Group exhibitions include Stella Capes is an artist, born in member of The Ex since 1990. A Spoken Word Exhibition, The Sheffield, UK, and now living and In more recent years, he has in- Baltic Centre for Contemporary working in London. Solo exhibi- volved himself with the Amster- My Dinner with André Art, Newcastle (2009) and No tions include Stella Capes, Kunst- dam improvisation scene, working 17 May 1.30pm, Cinema 2, £5 More Reality, Depo, Istanbul & halle Fribourg/Fri-Art, Fribourg, alongside electronic musicians, De Appel, Amsterdam (2008–9). Switzerland (2008), The Laughter as well as composing soundtracks Audacious and compelling, Louis Malle’s arthouse Paradox, Associates Gallery, Lon- for films and performing regularly classic eavesdrops on a conversation in a New Pierre Bismuth don (2007) and Ensemble—a mime with dancers. York restaurant between playwright-actor Wallace Pierre Bismuth is an artist born in for two players, The International Shawn and theatre director André Gregory. The two 2003 speakers play themselves, in a witty and provocative Paris, and now living and work- 3, Manchester, UK ( ). She has Carolyn Cheasman ing in Brussels and London. Solo also appeared in group exhibitions and Rachel Everard dialogue that is at once confessional and scripted. The All-Seeing 2007 [Dir Louis Malle, USA 1981 110 exhibitions include at The Showroom, London ( ) Carolyn Cheasman and Rachel , mins] Eye (the hardcore-techno version) at and the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Everard are highly experienced the British Film Institute, South- London (2006). speech and language therapists. bank Gallery, London (2008). He Since qualifying in 1979, Che- The Aristocrats has also participated in numerous Leandro Cardoso asman has worked at City Lit 24 2 2 5 group shows, including Artist Leandro Cardoso has been work- College of Adult Education, May pm, Cinema , £ Talk, ARCO, Madrid (2009) and ing with voice loops and audio developing group-therapy courses A man walks into a talent agent’s office with his For the First and The Second Time, clips as an ongoing homage to for adults who stammer. She is family and says, ‘Have I got an act for you!’ The CAC, Vilnius (2008). Brazilian concrete poetry; and currently undertaking a Masters talent agent replies, ‘So what do you do?’ An all-star more recently has started fus- degree in mindfulness-based ap- cast of over a hundred comedians, including Sarah Ben Cain ing bits and pieces of theory to proaches. Everard is also based at Silverman, Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Carey, A workshop in the Reading Room Ben Cain is an artist living and produce audiovisual lectures or City Lit College, working primar- deconstruct, discuss and deliver their own versions working in London. Solo ex- pedagogical exercises. ily with adults who stammer. of what may be the world’s dirtiest, least told and hibitions include No End to the Some of his work can be seen at longest joke. [Dir Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza, Era, Associates Gallery, London www.nerefuh.com.br USA 2005, 89 mins] (2007), and Tell Them Something, Architects Association, Zagreb, 16 17 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / participants & Goldstein

Jeremiah Day William Furlong’s Anne Karpf After graduating from UCLA Audio Arts Anne Karpf is a sociologist and working in Los Angeles William Furlong has exhibited and writer. An award-winning both in and out of an art context, nationally and internationally, journalist, she is the author of Jeremiah Day moved to Europe in including a sound installation in three books, including The Human 2003 to attend Rijksakademie van Intelligence, New British Art at Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Tate Britain, London (2000), and Talent (Bloomsbury, 2006). For Since then, he has had a number the solo show To Hear Yourself as seven years she was radio critic of of solo exhibitions, including Others Hear You, South London The Guardian. Co-editor of a new News Animations/No Words For Gallery (2002). His new book, book about Israel, Zionism and You, Springfield, Project Arts Speaking of Art, Four Decades of Jewish identity, she was the recipi- Centre, Dublin (2008) and Amor Art in Conversation is published by ent of a British Academy Thank- Fati, Beyond Baroque Literary Phaidon Press. Offering to Britain Fellowship for Arts Center, Los Angeles (2005). research, and teaches at London Ryan Gander Metropolitan University. Chris Evans Ryan Gander lives and works Chris Evans is an artist born in in London. His work is multi- Eve Karpf Eastrington, UK. Solo exhibitions faceted, ranging from installation, Eve Karpf specialises in voice include Point at it, like a farmer sculpture, intervention, writ- work, including radio drama, film at a pig, Galerie Juliette Jongma, ing and performance lectures to dubbing, GPS satellite naviga- Amsterdam (2008), What’s the photography, drawing and film. tion voices, commercials, museum point of revolution without copu- In 2008 he had solo shows at Ikon guides and various roles such as lation, copulation, copulation?, Gallery, Birmingham, South the voice of Miss McGonagle in Luettgenmeijer, Berlin (2008),As London Gallery and Museum Boi- the Harry Potter CD Rom games, simple as your life used to be, The jmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. many cartoon voices, Dennis the British School, Rome (2008) and Menace, and the timeless Padding- Militant Bourgeois: An Existential- Melanie Gilligan ton Bear. ist Retreat, International Project Melanie Gilligan is an artist who Space, Birmingham (2007). lives and works in London. Solo Joan La Barbara exhibitions include Prison for Ob- Joan La Barbara is a composer, Robert Filliou jects, Transmission Gallery, Glas- performer and sound artist. She Robert Filliou (1926—1987) was gow (2008) and Crisis in the Credit has created works for multiple a French Fluxus artist and writer. System (commissioned by Artangel voices, chamber ensembles, music He worked in film, sculpture and Interaction) (2008). She has also theatre, orchestra and interac- performance, as well as ‘action participated in a number of group tive technology and developed a poetry’. Regarded as a cult artist projects, including La Commune unique vocabulary of experimen- Filliou’s works are nomadic, por- at the Serpentine Gallery, London tal and extended vocal tech- table and precarious. He collabo- (2007). niques. She was awarded the 2004 rated with artists such as Marcel Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Broodthaers, Dieter Roth, and Sharon Hayes Composition, the prestigious Daniel Spoerri. A retrospective Sharon Hayes’ work moves DAAD Artist-in-Residency in of his work was held at MACBA, between multiple media—video, Berlin and seven National Endow- Barcelona, in 2003. performance, installation—in an ment for the Arts fellowships. ongoing investigation into the in- Simone Forti terrelation between history, poli- Chris Mann Simone Forti is an internationally tics and speech. Solo exhibitions Chris Mann is an Australian recognised performance innovator. include the collaborative project 9 composer, poet and performer At the forefront of the blurring Scripts from a Nation at War, Tate specialising in the emerging field between art, life and performance Modern, London (2008) and of ‘compositional linguistics’. Excerpt from Malcolm Goldstein, Illuminations from Fantastic Gardens, 1974 (for vocal ensemble) that characterised contemporary I march in the parade of liberty, but Mann founded the New Music Reprinted by permission of the author. art in the 1960s, Forti has contin- as long as I love you I’m not free, Centre, Melbourne, in 1972 and ued to teach, to write poetry and The New Museum for Contempo- taught at the State College of to create innovative performances rary Art, New York (2007). Victoria in the mid-1970s. He then that challenge both dancers and left teaching to work on research viewers to experience the move- projects involving cultural ideas ment of their own bodies. of information theory. 18 19 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / robson & participants

Adam Pendleton Seth Price Jonnie Robinson Adam Pendleton is a New York- Seth Price is an artist working in Jonnie Robinson is Lead Content based artist. In a conceptual, a variety of media. He was born Specialist for Sociolinguistics multi-disciplinary practice that in East Jerusalem and now lives at the British Library. He was includes painting, writing and and works in New York. He has responsible for the BL’s online performance, he shifts the mean- had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle dialect archive, ASR: Accents & ing of cultural forms, language Zürich, (2008), Modern Art Ox- Dialects (www.bl.uk/sounds) and images. He is also co-editor ford (with Kelley Walker, 2007), and created Sounds Familiar of the occasional magazine LAB Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (www.bl.uk/soundsfamiliar), an MAG, which publishes the work (2007) and Reena Spaulings, New interactive, educational website of artists, designers, poets and York (2006). He also participated that celebrates regional speech in architects. in the Whitney Biennial at The the UK. He is currently working Whitney Museum of America Art, on Voices of the UK, a Leverhulme Falke Pisano New York (2008). Trust-funded project to establish Falke Pisano is an artist who a permanent UK dialect database lives and works in Amsterdam. Jonathan Rée at the BL. She has had solo exhibitions at Jonathan Rée is a writer, philoso- Kunstverein, Graz (2009, with pher and historian. His journalism Manuel Saiz Benoit Maire), Balice Hertling, appears in The Times Literary Manuel Saiz is a London-based Paris (2008) and Halle für Kunst Supplement, The London Review of visual artist. Since 1995, he has e.V., Lunebürg (2008). She also Books, The Independent, Prospect, worked primarily in video and participated in the 53rd Venice The Nation, The Evening Standard video installations. His produc- Biennale (2009), and in the exhibi- and elsewhere. His books include tions have shown in numerous art tions Modern Modern at Chelsea I See a Voice (1999), Philosophical film and video festivals, such as Art Museum, New York, and Tales (1986) and Proletarian Phi- Impakt, Utrecht; VideoLisboa, Modernologies, MACBA, Barce- losophers (1984). He also has wide Lisbon; and Videoex, Zurich. lona (2009). experience as a broadcaster. Recent group shows include East End Academy at Whitechapel Art Plus Minus Ensemble Julian Rhind-Tutt Gallery, London, and Save the Plus Minus is an Anglo/Belgian Julian Rhind-Tutt is an actor, Day at Kunstbüro, Vienna. octet committed to presenting new probably best known for his role work alongside landmark modern as Dr Mac in the BAFTA award- The School of Sound repertoire. Formed in 2003, +- is winning comedy, Green Wing. The School of Sound was founded distinguished by its interest in Other recent work includes Dan in 1998 by Larry Sider and Diane avant-garde, conceptual and in Landscape with Weapon at the Freeman to promote an awareness experimental open instrumenta- National Theatre, the Road Trip of how sound is used in the arts tion pieces, such as Stockhausen’s Barclaycard advertising campaign, and media. Through its interna- 1963 classic, from which the group and a variety of TV dramas in- tional symposia, master classes and takes its name. cluding Oliver Twist, The Shadow workshops, the SOS teaches pro- in the North and Merlin. fessional practitioners, academics Oliver Pouliot and students about the relationship Oliver Pouliot is an American Jimmy Robert and between sound, music and image. Sign Language and International Ian White www.schoolofsound.co.uk Sign interpreter who has worked Artist and curator Ian White in contemporary arts for the past and artist Jimmy Robert have seven years. He is currently work- performed internationally, both ing towards his post-graduate together and separately. Their per- degree in sign-language interpret- formance at Tate Britain, in 2004, Ernest Robson 1969 ing and has contributed to the translated the act of spending time Example and method for prosodynic cue-scoring system, publication Deaf Professionals and together into a unique work that Designated Interpreters (Gallaudet incorporated a performance of Press, 2008). Yvonne Rainer’s seminal Trio A, a dance work from 1966 that Robert and White were recently invited to perform at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (March 2009). 20 21 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / participants & practical information

Professor Sophie van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven, catalogues and magazines. Her Scott The Netherlands and FRAC, doctorate was on Andy Warhol’s Practical information Sophie Scott is the group leader Bourgone, Dijon, France, from audio tapes. She is currently the of the Speech Communication 2008–09. She has also participated interviewer for The Art News- Group at the Institute of Cogni- in group shows at Tate Modern, paper and is a senior lecturer at tive Neuroscience at University London; The Hugh Lane Gallery, University of the Creative Arts, College London. She has worked Dublin and Milton Keynes Gal- Rochester. on many different aspects of lery, UK. human speech, from rhythm and Alex Waterman BrandonRoom emotion, to accents and im- Louise Stern Alex Waterman is a musician and 2nd floor pressionists. Her research uses Louise Stern is a native Califor- curator living and working in h functional-imaging techniques to nian who now lives and works in New York, London and Brussels. Nas investigate how the human brain London. Her art, which centres He is a founding member of the Room perceives speech and controls on ideas of language, communi- Plus Minus Ensemble, which is speech production. She is funded cation, silence and isolation, has based in Brussels and London. by the Wellcome Trust, London. recently been shown in London, He has performed at Issue Project Cornwall, Geneva, New York, Room, New York, with Anthony Cinem 1 Dexter Sinister Barcelona, Madrid and Albania. Coleman, Chris Mann and David a Upper Dexter Sinister is the compound Her first book of short stories Watson (2007) and the National Cinem Gallery st floor name of David Reinfurt and is coming out in 2010 (Granta Portrait Gallery, London, with 2 a 1 Stuart Bailey. Reinfurt teaches at Books). She is also the founder Plus Minus Ensemble (2007). e Upper Columbia University and Rhode and publisher of Maurice, a He has curated exhibitions at The Gallery Island School of Design, contemporary art magazine for Kitchen and Miguel Abreu Gal- New York. Bailey is currently children. lery, both in New York City. Box Offic involved in diverse projects at Par- sons School of Design, New York, Stephen Sutcliffe Mark Wilsher and Pasadena Art Center, Los Stephen Sutcliffe is an artist Artist Mark Wilsher was the Shop Welcome! Concourse Angeles. Sarah Crowner became born in Harrogate, UK, and now curator at Tablet gallery, Lon- é Lower Gallery involved with Dexter Sinister living and working in Glasgow. don, from 2003–05, and is a Caf soon after its establishment. Selected solo exhibitions include regular writer for Art Monthly. She has made and distributed Stephen Sutcliffe, Micky Schubert, Recent projects include the solo numerous artists’ books and Berlin (2008), Shout Out (With El show Unfinished Business at the publications about art. Hombre Trajeado), Chapter Arts Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and Bar Centre, Cardiff (2008), I Don’t CHELSEA Space, London (2009) Terry Smith Know my Name, TART Contem- and Drawing on Sculpture, Leeds Reading Room Terry Smith is an artist who lives porary, San Francisco (2005) and City Art Gallery (2007). He is cur- Ground and works in London. Solo exhibi- Project Space, Tramway, Glasgow rently working on a film project Theatre tions include One thing leads to (2003). for Picture This in Bristol. floor another, Studio 1.1, London (2004), Marking Time, LUX The Thread Dr Laura Wright Gallery, London (2000) and The Thread is the London Con- Dr Laura Wright, Faculty of Eng- Fault Line, Museo de Arte Car- sortium’s new radio discussion lish, University of Cambridge, rillo Gil, Mexico City (1999). He programme, broadcast on Reso- is a historical sociolinguist who has also participated in a number nance FM on Tuesday nights from specialises in the history of the of group shows including Et Tu 11pm to midnight. Participants London dialect from around 1300 Tribute, The Embassy Gallery, have included Richard Osborne, to the twentieth century. She is the OPENING HOURS & ADMISSION Edinburgh (2006) and ShowCASe, Mitha Budyharto, Jean Owen, author of numerous publications Edinburgh (2005). Seamus Malone, Sarah Joshi and and editor of The Development 1300 1800 The exhibition is in the Galleries, Concourse and The performances, presentations, workshops and Leandro Cardoso. of Standard English, — : Reading Room. It is free, and open during the ICA’s Theories, Descriptions, Conflicts. discussions are mainly in the Lower Gallery or Frances Stark regular gallery hours (daily 12—7pm, Thursdays Theatre. Almost all of them are free, but some Frances Stark is a writer and artist Dr Jean Wainwright She is currently preparing a book 9 require booking (see individual event listings). who often uses words and phrases Dr Jean Wainwright’s practice is on the English spoken on the East until pm). as visual motifs in her artworks. the artist’s interview. She has been India Company’s island of St The residencies are in the Galleries and Theatre. To book for an event, please call the ICA Box Office Solo exhibitions include The Fall the primary interviewer for Audio Helena in the South Atlantic. They are also free, and are open during the ICA’s on 020 7930 3647, or visit www.ica.org.uk/talkshow of Frances Stark, Culturegest, Arts since 1995. She contributes to regular gallery hours (with the exception of the for more information. Lisbon; Portikus, Frankfurt; TV and radio programmes, books, Stella Capes residency, open 12—6pm). 22 23 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / practical information

date in galleries, concourse may and reading room Lower gallery upper gallery theatre cinema 2

w e d 6 Performance: Robert Ashley (7pm)

t h u 7 Performance: Jeremiah Day / Simone Forti (7pm)

fr i 8

s a t 9 Presentation: Speakeasy (12—7.30pm) Presentation: Speakeasy (12—7.30pm) Film: s u n 10 The Shout (2pm)

m o n 11 Performance: Jimmy Robert and Ian White (7pm) Re s i d e n c y : c a s t i l l o /c o rr a l e s (6—17 Ma y ) t u e 12 Workshop: They Give Themselves Away… (3pm)

w e d 13 Discussion: The Vocal Knot (7pm)

t h u 14

fr i 15 Presentation: Stephen Sutcliffe (7pm)

s a t 16 Performance: School of Sound (7pm) Film: My Dinner s u n 17 Conference: Our Speaking Selves (2—7pm) with Andre (1.30pm)

Ex h i b i t i on : m o n 18 Workshop: Latin American Political Chants (3pm) v a r i o u s p a r t i c i p a n t s (6—31 Ma y ) Performance: Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor / t u e 19 Chris Mann /Alex Waterman (7pm)

w e d 20

Re s i d e n c y : 3 t h u 21 Workshop: They Give Themselves Away… ( pm) Me l a n i e Gi l l i g a n (18—25 Ma y )

fr i 22 Discussion: Doublespeak (3pm)

s a t 23 Film: s u n 24 The Aristocrats (2pm)

Re s i d e n c y : m o n 25 St e l l a Ca p e s (24—26 Ma y )

Re s i d e n c y : t u e 26 Fi a Ba c k s t r ö m (25—31 Ma y )

w e d 27

Re s i d e n c y : t h u 28 Workshop: Effective Speaking in Groups (3pm) Pl u s Mi n u s En s e mb l e (26—30 Ma y )

fr i 29

s a t 30 Presentation: Dexter Sinister (7pm)

s u n 31 Performance: Joan La Barbara (4pm) Performance: Plus Minus Ensemble (7pm)

24 25 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 publications

exhibition by artist Enrico David, 2009 (published on the occasion Pierre Bismuth publications at the ICA from September— of the exhibition Adam Pendleton: 2007 By Raimar Stange and November . The exhibition EL T D K at Haunch of Venison, Thierry Davila The following recent publications are available from included paintings, works on pa- Berlin, 2009) per, sculptures and vitrines from 28.2 x 21.6 cm, 208 pages the ICA Bookshop the last five years, as well as two This catalogue covers two large Price £25.00 large-scale installations. bodies of new work, including 2006 eight new Black Dada paintings Publisher: Flammarion, and the System of Display series. This volume charts Pierre nought to sixty The catalogue also features two Bismuth’s artistic development creative essays responding to through an analytical text, a visual Editors: Mark Sladen, Richard these works and an in-depth gallery of works and an interview Birkett, Isla Leaver-Yap interview with the artist. by a well-known art critic. Texts by JJ Charlesworth, Melissa Drawing from art history and Gronlund, Pablo Lafuente, Lisa cultural references, Bismuth uses Lefeuvre, Paul O’Neill and Mick Playing with Words: the power of language and image Wilson, Emily Pethick, Sarah the spoken word in in his work. This monograph Pierce artistic practice is a portrait of his past and Edited by Cathy Lane current work. 19.4 x 28 cm, 276 pages, full colour illustrations 23.4 x 15.6 cm, 208 pages, 38 b&w Hardcover illustrations F.R.David 18 95 12 99 Price £ . Price £ . Edited by Will Holder with Ann Publisher: ICA, London, 2009 Publisher: Research Group for 2008 Demeester and Dieter Roelstraete Nought to Sixty Artists Publications (RGAP), commemorates 19.2 x 12 cm, 240 pages the ICA’s season of the same This book is a collection of 11 95 name, which presented 60 projects responses from over forty leading Price £ . in 6 months, from May–November contemporary artists and compos- Publisher: De Appel arts centre, 2008. The Nought to Sixty project ers who have been invited to repre- Amsterdam was an ambitious, fast-moving sent aspects of their creative prac- programme of exhibitions and tice with words, and in particular, F.R.DAVID is a twice-yearly jour- events by emerging artists from the spoken word, for the printed nal which focuses on the ‘status’ Britain and Ireland. The Nought to page. The contributors have cho- of writing in contemporary art Sixty catalogue is a comprehen- sen to represent their work through practice. Writing as a mode that ICA publications Henrik Olesen, Seth Price and who use other people as a medium. sive compendium of the emerging writing, graphics, poetry, photo- informs and feeds, supports and Hito Steyerl. Curated by Polly Curated by Claire Bishop and art scene in the two countries. graphs and interviews. describes, backs up and inter- Staple, the show featured art- Mark Sladen, the exhibition in- prets, comments and reflects upon dispersion ists who deconstruct and re-mix cluded works by Pawel Althamer contemporary artistic production. found images, investing them with / Nowolipie Group, Phil Collins, Hey Hey Glossolalia Writing as ‘the core material’ of Editors: Polly Staple and personal narratives and using Dora García, Christoph a number of artists but equally as Richard Birkett them to explore the contemporary Schlingensief, Barbara Visser, Edited by Mark Beasley a mode that exists parallel to or in Texts by Giorgio Agamben, Nora landscape of information and Donelle Woolford and 72 pages service of the visual. Unlike Oscar M. Alter, Mark Leckey, Seth Price, image distribution. Artur Zmijewski. related Price £22.99 Wilde’s cynic, F.R.DAVID— Jacqueline Rose, Eve Kosofsky Publisher: Creative Time, 2008 keep it to yourself—knows the Sedgwick, Hito Steyerl, Jan Ver- Selected publications available in value of nothing but not the prices double agent enrico david A two-part publication, Volume of things. woert, Kazys Varnelis. the ICA Bookshop. one is entitled Hey Hey and Vol- 21 15 136 31 Editors: Claire Bishop and Silvia Texts by Enrico David and Simon x cm, pages, colour, Tramontana Thompson ume two, Glossolalia. The book 21 b&w illustrations ADAM PENDLETON is produced in conjunction with Price £12.95 Texts by Claire Bishop, Silvija 18.8 x 26 cm, 52 pages + 44 page EL T D K a series of events and lectures of 2008 Jestrovic and Nicholas Ridout 22 the same name, which took place Publisher: ICA, London, insert, colour illustrations Texts by Mark Beasley and Jena 17 23.5 144 Hardcover in New York City and explored Dispersion was published to x cm, pages 32 50 Osman 12 95 Price £ . the infinite shades of the voice. accompany an exhibition of the Price £ . 23 16.5 120 52 2009 Publisher: ICA and Koenig Books, x cm, pages, colour Volume one provides critical and 10 same name, featuring the work of Publisher: ICA, London, 2009 art historical groundwork for the ICA Members receive % off all seven international artists: London, illustrations This publication commemorates Hardcover performance series, while Volume books, ICA branded gifts and ICA Anne Collier, Maria Eichhorn, Enrico David is published in asso- 20 00 two includes documentary mate- films and DVDs. Mark Leckey, Hilary Lloyd, the exhibition Double Agent, Price £ . a group show featuring artists ciation with the first major public Publisher: Haunch of Venison, rial from the entire programme. www.ica.org.uk/bookshoop 26 27 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 editions & Future Projects

Will Stuart with Geoff Bailey, ‘Struttare per Parla de piedi’ (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1965–66), Liliane Lijn with emphasis on the V, 2009 Sky Never Stops, 1963

editions future projects poor. old. tired. horse. 17 June—25 August 2009

For the ICA is publishing a group of edi- Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. is an exhibition that takes from a periodical that he ran from 1962 to 1968, and tions including a silkscreen print conceived by Will an imaginative and expansive look at text-based which featured graphic and literary experiments by Stuart with Geoff Bailey, as well as a special poster art practices from the 1960s to the present day. In Finlay alongside those of other artists and poets. edition by Fia Backström and a publication of the particular the exhibition is inspired by the example Finlay, in one of his aphoristic assertions, maintained collected film scripts of Chris Evans (written in col- of Concrete Poetry, a movement that flowered in that ‘Stupidity reduces language to words’, and it is laboration with Will Bradley and Tirdad Zolghadr). the 60s but which is now largely forgotten. Concrete the complex potential of the linguistic and the liter- For more information contact Vicky Steer, Editions Poetry explored the graphic potential of language ary within art that is explored in this exhibition. 020 7766 1425 alongside its poetic and literary possibilities, and so Manager on or email vicky.steer@ica. too do the works in this exhibition, which includes Exhibitors include: Carl Andre, Matthew Brannon, org.uk or see www.ica.org.uk/editions works by figures who emerged in the60 s alongside Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alasdair Gray, Philip Guston, We offer ICA Members and Patrons priority purchase those of younger, contemporary artists. David Hockney, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Janice and (until 31 May 2009) a 20% discount on all limited Kerbel, Christopher Knowles, Ferdinand Kriwet, edition prints and portfolios. All proceeds from the sale The Scottish artist and writer Ian Hamilton Finlay is Liliane Lijn, Robert Smithson, Frances Stark and of these editions directly support the ICA’s exhibi- the most important figure associated with Concrete Sue Tompkins. Curated by Mark Sladen. tion programme. The editions will be available to the Poetry in Britain, and the exhibition takes its title general public from Wednesday 6 May. 28 29 In many ways departs from a conventional exhibition format, emphasising presentation as a genera- tive and interdisciplinary process, and this experimental approach is continued in Roland. The journal is intended as a companion to visitors to the ICA but it also has a wider discursive function. The second half of the maga- zine includes a collage of texts and illustrations, includ- ing a new essay by Will Holder, a translation of a recent text by Ricardo Basbaum and a number of excerpts from original scores, including one from the experimental American composer Robert Ashley and another from the improviser, violinist and composer, Malcolm Gold- stein. The publication also includes a work by the per- formance artist Joan La Barbara, a number of drawings by the artist Pierre Bismuth, an excerpt from Konstantin Raudive’s Breakthrough, the seminal text on Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and a text piece by the poet and performer, Chris Mann.

31 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk Show / holder

Good evening Thanks to He speaks throughWilliam Read’s Art and Industry “believed that the artist my name is Will Holder, Charlotte Bonham Carter Morris, whom, like himself goes on to become should be like an engineer, “ART AND INDUSTRY” and before I say anything, for telling me had been “abusively” labeled a more British translation [outline] I must thank Mark Sladen to keep this “intellectual Luddite”, of Walter Gropius, arranging materials and Richard Birkett, under 2000 words but had insisted on Tradition, who, scientifically and objectively, (for Whatson) for asking me and defined this as like the constructivists and producing artworks to act on their behalf “an organic continuity before him, as rationally as any other in methods of work” object.” 1 3 4 17 18 19

And thank you Speaking for myself, This is a show insisting that And here I am, A while ago I saw Ricardo Basbaum I would say that Talk show about “design”, these abstract forms today, an episode of Columbo, for asking me is a “design” exhibition. and it seems recounting these things where the suspect gallerist the right questions, Having seen it with your traditionally fitting derived from machines I’ve read to you says “Oh, I didn’t know towards a better own eyes, this may be odd, to discuss this, and machine-based methods you liked art choice of words but in the past months, here at the ICA of (re)production As we do. Mister Columbo. I have persistently told my- were THE means to What do you prefer, self to insist on this: “integrate art into life” painting or sculpture?” 5 6 7 20 21 22

Herbert Read, Herbert Read that of If only So what could be today’s Stephen Bann gives a clue, the practising designer ‘things’ were definition “of the norms in speaking Now, a few years before that elementary. or universal elements of Ian Hamilton Finlay some of you he opened the ICA and that of in art”? he writes across the waters the responsible citizen.” If only we just painted may leave or yawn told us that “the problem of and sculpted in silence. when I mention his name, design may be approached but from two points of view: or not? 8 9 10 23 24 25

In his essay Art and Industry As though art was one thing, Frances Stark “Elementarism was based Their impersonal, How can we attach Read claimed and life was something else, would disagree on the conviction that entirely accesible nature en- any overriding significance that he felt that design and design was a form of art with such a reduced view radically simple geometrical titled them to be utilised in of a technical kind could that would neatly insert and forms could be taken complex structures to those figures in an age “integrate art into life.” one into the other, or as the common elements without concealing which is characterised bring these two disparates Robert Filiou told us [the classical constants] the constructional process. by electric circuitry in proximity with each other “art is what makes life more of plastic and architectural rather than interesting than art.” expression. (But) mechanical systems?” 11 12 13 26 27 28

And watching Xavier Le Roy the need to talk— When Read intended Robert Ashley And responding A form that is neither recently re-iterate about this proper to “integrate art into life” and Gordon Mumma to Donald Judd’s note that geometric or organic his life-story, in public, professional Life/Art/Indus- he hoped we would do this spoke of electronics as “The main virtue of would be a great discovery.” of how he went from try by way of “folk instrumentation” geometric shapes is that biologist to choreographer, nounising— and by way of this, they aren’t organic Joseph Kosuth answered and can’t see a difference became clear “the definition of the norms conversation, as all art otherwise is. between the two or universal elements in art” Ashley found his own, “It’s language, Don.” more everyday form. 14 15 16 29 30 31

32 33 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk Show / holder

I’ve recently been accused, HOW MY THOUGHTS or we produce words for i t speaking of i t talking about i t by another designer, ABOUT DESIGN METHODS ONCE ITS TYPED embedded negotiates its value, negotiates its meaning and renaissance man, HAVE CHANGED DURING ITS PUBLISHED with silent instructions and alters i t and alters i t of falling under the romantic THE YEARS, to produce more words— spell of the words of or [as design does] [as does design] John Chris Jones’, found IS DESIGNING within essays such as A RESPONSE TO THE WHOLE OF LIFE? 32 33 34 47 48 49 no intellectual Luddite, so why not make a start Recalling “On the Gradual and acknowledging and that anything you say or every l-e-t-t- Jones considers at using them in more Fabrication of Thoughts that this may have bearing e-r a more deeply-rooted personal and human ways? While Speaking” by Heinrich production of knowledge on the production instructs the choice state of production, To do this one has to begin von Kleist will not stop of a next word, and of the n one that resists being by ignoring the responses I was in conversation the production and e, “physically tied to the alien- and assumptions with two students, of the next word, and x, ations of mechanisation, we have inherited from and heard myself say and the production and t centuries of mechanisation.” of the next word. 35 36 37 50 51 52

“The English language However, the last century’s (yellow triangle, Collectively, where every S documents Gertrude Stein “said in the is a dominant technology” trans-national avant-garde concentric blue, we produce, the D that went before him, beginning of saying this thing has instilled a tradition yes yellow, blue no, and speak joined-up, that testament that if it were possible (something I hadn’t of visualisation, blue circle, to the previous R that a movement were lively realised until that moment, a pavlovian imperative female, yellow eccentric, the way we learnt i t who accounts for enough it would exist but to transpose male blue at school the history of O, so completely that it would which needs qualification) language into images yellow towards you, telling us the why not be necessary to see it and back again: blue away) and what of W. moving against anything 38 39 40 53 54 55 an imperative In response to and translated this to know that it is moving. There’s that word again: Ricardo said, yes, that’s nice, for instructions these human into a word: This is what we mean by life as a model to produce things relationships, Craft. and in my way I have tried life. for h o w we produce, and images William Morris to make portraits of this “without concealing that stand in took great pains to and not forgetting thing the constructional process” for relationships make the object Tradition: defined as always have tried but what about w h a t and all the talk that replaced “an organic continuity always may try to make it is that you say every day? that goes with them them, in methods of work” portraits of this thing.” 41 42 43 56 57 58

Why consider ourselves when we already have one: Today we value I said if we can make then surely we free up and speak [piecemeal] engineers the transposition the w h a t as the h o w: more time to naturally as we always have done, whose job description of information a document containing gravitate yet is the integration of art into into more information, the instruction, and edit ourselves in more detail, life by way of the invention “We need to talk” without the need the instruction as document, towards w h o and with more care, of a formal translation into for integrating tokens as an efficient and w h a t greater precision, a universal set of elements to represent one and the same, we would prefer to speak of and possibly even for use at every occasion— i t and with, fewer words: 44 45 46 59 60 61

34 35 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk Show / Holder & Ashley

Thank you

[May 5th 2009]

62

notes 17. Herbert Read, introduction to Art and 34. J Christopher Jones, ONCE ITS TYPED 2. to be accompanied by the first 7 bars of industry, Faber and Faber 1957 iTS PUBLISHED, insert in Spanner “Rent” (Pet Shop Boys, 1987) [looped to 19. Excerpt from wall text, Rodchenko and magazine, 1979 fade at 5mins 28] Popova—Defining Constructivism, Tate 37. Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Gradual Excerpt from Robert Ashley, 11. 2009 Robin Kinross, “Herbert Read’s Art and modern, fabrication of Thoughts While Dust, Lovely Music Ltd, 1998, pp. 1–3 industry, a History”, in Journal of Design 28. Stephen Bann, Ian Hamilton Finlay, An speaking”, in F.R.DAVID, ‘A is for history, 1988 illustrated Essay, Wild Hawthorn Press/ orses’, de Appel, 2008 13. Frances Stark, The Architect and the Ceolfrith Press, 1972 40. After Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the housewife, Bookworks, 1999 29. Robert Ashley, Music with Roots in the spiritual in Art, (1910), Dover, 1977 The Eternal Network presents Robert aether: 4 Landscape with Gordon Mumma, 57. Gertrude Stein, “Portraits and Filiou, Sprengel Museum Hannover / 1976 Repetition” in Lectures in America, (1935), musée d’Art Moderne, Paris / Kunsthalle 31. Joseph Kosuth, Notebook on Water, Beacon Press 1985 Bern, 1985 1965–66, Multiples Inc. 1970 59. Correspondence with Ricardo Basbaum, 14. Xavier Leroy, Product of Circumstances, 32. Correspondence with Samuel Nyholm, 2009 Tate Modern, 21 & 22nd February 2009 2008 36 37 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk Show / Ashley

38 39 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / Lucier & basbaum

I AM SITTING IN A ROOM (1970) who sees our work?

For voice and ricardo basbaum electromagnetic tape The title of this text is a question that poses a problem: an Alvin Lucier artwork must not, and should not, be left to exist in isola- Necessary equipment: tion. Together with an artwork there is always space—pro- 1 microphone / 2 tape recorders / amplifier /1 loudspeaker duced, built and infiltrated. Therefore, when encountering an artwork, there is always the expectation that something Choose a room the musical Rewind the tape to its beginning, Make versions in which, for each or someone will be found in its presence. This is a situation qualities of which you would like transfer it to tape recorder #2, generation, the microphone is (in greater or lesser degrees of materiality), which indicates to evoke. play it back into the room through moved to different parts of the the loudspeaker and record a room or rooms. the presence of an absence—together with the work—to be Attach the microphone to the second generation of the origi- input of tape recorder #1. Make versions that can be per- filled by the recognition of waiting, by the passing of time. nal recorded statement through formed in real time. To the output of tape recorder #2 the microphone attached to tape It is important to avoid certain clichés: imprisoned by the attach the amplifier and loud- recorder #1. anxiety generated by waiting, one is led to a condition that speaker. Rewind the second generation to is none other than an infinite corrosion of oneself. On the Use the following text or any its beginning and splice it onto the other text of any length: end of the original recorded state- one hand, it might seem that to produce artworks would 2 I am sitting in a room different from ment on tape recorder # . bind one to this strange waiting; but on the other hand, to one you are in now. Play the second generation only invest in the construction of this situation means, above all, I am recording the sound of my back into the room through the getting involved in an immense and intense provocation, speaking voice and I am going to loudspeaker and record a third play it back into the room again and generation of the original record- paying particular attention to the gradual and continuous ed statement through the micro- again until the resonant frequencies 1 developing of this place, which slowly becomes unified. of the room reinforce themselves so phone attached to recorder # . that any semblance of my speech, Continue this process through While we focus on the construction of the artwork, it is with perhaps the exception of many generations. certain that the artist’s action is more than the construction rhythm, is destroyed. All the generations spliced togeth- of the event, more than gathering plural aspects, indicative What you will hear, then, are the er in chronological order make natural resonant frequencies of the a tape composition the length of of resonances, changing expiry dates and layers of times, room articulated by speech. which is determined by the length spaces, and rhythms. Does it have to be this way? I regard this activity not so much as of the original statement and the in real terms, there is no one next to the artwork, but a demonstration of a physical fact, number of generations recorded. but more as a way to smooth out any Make versions in which one little by little, crystallisations occur at specific moments, irregularities my speech might have. recorded statement is recycled driving the artwork forward. Materialisation is part of the Record your voice on tape through many rooms. production itself, and this movement speaks to the desire through the microphone attached Make versions using one or more to tape recorder #1. speakers of different languages in to intervene in the state of things. The result—the nature different rooms. 41

Alvin Lucier is an experimental composer. In the work, I am Sitting in a Room (1970), Lucier records himself in a room, reading a text. He then plays back the recording, and re-records it, repeating this process a number of times. Lucier’s words become increasingly indecipherable. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / basbaum of the artwork—is the accumulation of many interests tury to truly recognise the role of this conglomerado of (the artist’s implosion). The artist, at the initial stages of alterities (Duchamp refers to “public”, “history” and the piece, sets out to build an invisible place for reception, “posterity”)3 with regard to the artwork’s reception. As protecting a specific area that will transmute into a place an artist, he developed an acute consciousness of the of encounters. Therefore, the materiality of any artwork together with place (or terreiro of encounters) produced by (situation) is a mere pretext for an invitation to a conglom- the work. In every gesture, he was aware of strategies erado 1 of alterities—I (the artist coming out of himself ), of reception and distribution. It wasn’t until 1950/60— you, he, she, they, friends, society, culture, history, etc. after Umberto Eco’s Opera Aperta (1962), the participa- The artwork is built from the ability to divert the flow that tive work of Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape and Hélio Oiticica at some point must pass through it. The artwork is a com- (from 1958 onwards), of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang plex, non-linear calculation that does not fulfil a wish.A ny Iser’s ‘Aesthetics of Reception’ in literature (1967)—that artwork involves constant vigilance, and a permanent state the progressive and generalised recognition of this topos of engagement, whereby very few people really approach occurred as inseparable from the intrinsic topology of the artist’s work with intensity—maybe a dozen in a life- any artistic situation: the convergence of bodies, inter- time. This takes the effect and impact of the artwork to a ests, associations, negotiations. From this moment on, more pragmatic level. It is necessary to understand that in being an artist meant understanding the collective condi- producing an artwork, in articulating the gestures of the tion of the work as a site for the inscription of a multiplic- poetic construction, it is not just a work that is produced, ity of interests, and whose value is increasingly attributed but more importantly, a space that stretches from a minor to accounting for the series of articulations involved (the encounter (the skin to skin of body contact) to a major participants, public, critics, market, culture, etc). But a encounter (the constructions of a historical and cultural warning; It is not about creating a work/situation without body) a terreiro of encounters 2. The location of the piece something or someone, to be eventually filled, it is rather does not only involve its physical materiality in a situation about understanding the artwork as an action or gesture (gesture, action, intervention), but a strange plural space, aiming towards one direction, whose construction means open for exchange, conversation, celebration, and others. having its own particular, singular space, described here Ricardo Basbaum (outrem, to use a term activated by Maurice Blanchot). (in one of its aspects) as a potential terreiro of encounters Diagram [me-you series] put into effect at the pivotal point of conjunction in opening up to a conglomerado of alterities. This suggests a 1995 a circuit, this condition spreads in several directions, as desire to receive the irregularities of paths different from a necessary opening that allows the work to take certain one’s own, and to attach oneself to the magnetism of paths, as a joining device, and as a producer of effects. affinity as well as the political war of interests. Marcel Duchamp, with his “art coefficient”, was one of in its circulation through the different sectors of the the few artists during the first half of the twentieth cen- art circuit, the work commands constant encounters— 42 43 1. Conglomerado is the name of a publication blocks”. Conglomerado can be translated conversations, celebrations, narrative 3. Marcel Duchamp, ‘O ato criador’, (The conceived of by Hélio Oiticica in as conglomeration. games, historic references, etc. being Creative Act) in Gregory Battcock (ed.), 1973 but never fully accomplished. The 2. The term terreiro (the place where crossed by rhythms, pulsations and A Nova Arte, Perspectiva, São Paulo, 2002, conglomerado was planned to contain afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies, strong corporeal existence. Furthermore, pp. 71–74. all the work produced during the period such as macumba and candomblé are it is interesting to reclaim the singularity he lived in New York, during the 1970s. practised) is used here with no religious of Afro-Brazilian confluences as thought- oiticica wrote: “It is a book which is or mystic connotation, but as a reference provoking agents. See Roberto Conduru, not a book, it is a conglomerado. Instead to a multiple and plural space open to Arte afro-brasileira, C/Arte, Belo of having sections or chapters it has exchanges, transformations, horizonte, 2007. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / basbaum

non-homogeneous, clearly unequal and varied, and (nec- of difficulties.I n its absolute reception, the artwork would essarily) frequently conflicting: facing a viewer or the be pure generosity, receiving everything and everyone (in public (manoeuvres of the production of subjectivity); a perverse kind of way, with no loss of strangeness, at the overcoming the critics’ discourse (a clash of the politics possible limit of a radical alterity). However, starting from of perception); serving the games of value affirmed by its own process of conception and production, positioned the market (the fight for symbolic legitimisation); acting inscriptions are developed whose profile would be more in the narrative collision of historical accounts (as a sec- appropriately affective-political, bringing propositions of ondary or main character) etc. The dynamics of so many a relational game, a bearer of intensities, to the one who diverse interests slowly imposes itself—in a heterogene- triggers the effects. The convergence of interests focusing ous manner—onto an artwork. The potential of an art- on the artwork today—21st century global economy, cog- work is valued in its varied and diverse receptions at dif- nitive capitalism—is immense. Perhaps one of the main ferent moments, by different segments, at the mercy of the lines of resistance lies in the transparency of the involved particular tastes of each group, but never in an absolute, relations and their submission to a base level (almost as or passive manner. The artwork rests at the core of each the most important feature) as well as an investment, proposer’s (or inventor’s or artist’s, as one wishes) acute- such that the piece flows non-aseptically along the path ness—the fine attention to the availability and rhythms of its present transit, leaving a sticky stamp of progress of the subtle and indirectly programmed connection—as as a public dimension. There is something provocative if, in relation to the architecture of the terreiros, it is up here; to recognise the construction of the piece as a proc- to the artwork to care for its membranes or borders, i.e. ess that secures the artwork, the terreiro is at the mercy not to be too inflexible or loose. It is possible to abbrevi- of the dynamic of the encounters, whose changing values Ricardo Basbaum Diagram [art-life series] 1994 ate an artwork’s sequence of encounters only by creating lie with the “dictatorship of the public” or “instrumental something with an intrinsically limited availability or a capitalization of cultural marketing”, which, acquiring particular condition—something in situation—and only, the hegemony of the conglomerate, intends to submerge of course, if this disposition has always been inscribed, the adventure of art to the banal clichés and fluctuations or prescribed by rhythms indicating a multiplicity of pos- of the capital market. In the historic period of the avant- sible receptions (even if contradictory). garde, the lack of a direct public (interlocutors beyond We can use the word resistance to describe the the immediate circuit of negotiators and producers) was artist’s decision to develop situations whose investment understood as pedagogy, generating considerable respect in this together with place suggests a partiality towards, or for the importance of direct, or critically mediated, con- reinforcement of, certain (productive) connections within tact with the artworks and their derivations; to make pos- such a conglomerado of alterities. Then, it becomes evident sible a collective thought, with its own rhythm, and in the that this is a complex insertion, with a considerable amount scale of actual propagation. In this context “a VAIA é 44 45 4. Translator’s note: “a VAIA é VIVA”: “The booing is alive”. “VIVA VAIA” (1972) is one of the most remarkable visual or semiotic poems of Augusto de Campos (São Paulo,1931), co-founder of the Noigandres group (1952), together with Haroldo de Campos and Décio pignatari. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / basbaum

VIVA”4—and the importance of unsteadiness is acknowl- acter; on the other, the organic line5 as an area of contact, edged as an element of the terreiro drumbeat, with dishar- productive void, membrane between heterogeneous ele- mony as a component of the conglomerado in its multiple ments—an area of micropolitics, body relevance, micro- voiced characters in any relevant critical novel. perception (José Gil, Suely Rolnik: “to capture the small- since the end of the 1980s, we have been immersed in est, most invisible and unconscious movement of other a period that is accountable for a succession of events in bodies” through “precise processes of contamination many directions. The virtual dimension is a matter of the and contagion”; “resonant body”).6 During the devel- production of value and the political arena: an issue not opment of this thread—net, more accurately—‘Convite foreign to art, which in this context is invited to make suc- ao raciocínio’ [Invitation to reasoning] (Waltércio Cal- cessive moves. It is not by chance then, that the production das, 1978) deconstructs the common-sense in a context of value and the political arena become the constitutive whose corporality (sensation/brain) is the affirmation of components of the operations of the construction of situ- a non-dualist present, an advanced positioning in a land- ations (work, piece): a conceptual condition (programme scape where conflicts are delineated as bio-politics. This from which the adequacy of framing is questioned); the 21st century sees art as a hypertrophic system, expanded, presence of the image as interface (signal to the approxi- making connections through the most remote areas of Ricardo Basbaum mation or intended encounter); an architectural com- the planet, and each with its own rhythms marked by the Diagram [love songs] prehension (the several layers that form the situation); shock between global pulsation and the vibrations of con- 1994 the ubiquity of market relations (invading matter from texts and places. Both fluxes—local or global—can be de- macro to micro); the auto-organisation of artists belong- territorialising vectors of resistance, and it is necessary to ing to groups and collectives (establishment of collective recognise which dynamics at play favour the emergence bodies of negotiation). Not by chance, the terreiro together of thought articulation + resonant body (bearing in mind with becomes an area of value, a place of encounters, that one is another: thought is vibration, resonance, and exchanges, transformations, celebrations, archives, nego- vice-versa). The present time makes the artwork some- tiations and narratives—where disputes are processed thing apparently de-potentialised, in comparison to the and territories divided. The debate about the “politics hyper manoeuvres of existent negotiations. Hence the of subjectivation”—the artwork actively mobilising the importance of the gesture of recognising the terreiro of viewer through the sensitive, sensorial membrane – plays encounters as an important feature. This presence is indeed a key role. Its significance lies in the important place it a part of the construction of the work and it demands has in the Brazilian art tradition, initiated by Lygia Clark, the artists (active characters of the cultural industries) Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Pape. It is not just one more dis- to reclaim their conceptual and aesthetic autonomy. covery, but a relevant leap towards an all-ensuing experi- It is impossible for this presence to be completely torn mentalism: on the one hand, the terreiro as the main char- away (an amputation that is wrong and unnecessary), 46 47

5. Concept developed by Lygia Clark since 6. See José Gil, “Abrir o corpo” (To open of the air-blow), Musée de Beaux-Arts elements of its texture, the marks of 1954. The organic line is a line that has up the body) and Suely Rolnik, “Uma de Nantes, Nantes, 2005, Pinacoteca do sensations that will compose its memory.” not been drafted or carved by anyone, terapêutica para tempos desprovidos estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2006. see for instance Suely Rolnik, “D’une but results from the contact of two de poesia” (A therapy for times without « Resonant body » is a notion developed cure pour temps dénués de poésie,” in different surfaces (planes, things, objects, poetry), in Suely Rolnik and Corinne by Suely Rolnik in a number of her Rolnik, Diserens, Lygia Clark, 13–26. bodies, or even concepts). See Guy Brett, diserens (eds), Lygia Clark, da obra ao writings (“corpo vibrátil,” in the “Lygia Clark, the borderline between art acontecimento: Somos o molde, a você cabe original), to refer to a permeable and and life,” in Third Text, no 1 (Autumn o sopro (From the piece to the happening: membranous body that “absorbs the 1987): 67. We are the mould, you are in charge forces that affect it, making them into Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / blackmore, basbaum & karpf

but the development of the clarity of its occupation is of changing voices Why do we talk extreme importance. An understanding of what we know so much? as work will bring back some of its vehemence of action, anne karpf not naturally, but as the result of effort. susan blackmore Recognising that art does not possess a place requires a In his ground-breaking 1959 book, ‘The Presentation of Several possible answers spring to mind. First, there may, after permanent exercise of denaturalisation. We have inscrip- Self in Everyday Life’, the sociologist Erving Goffman all, be a sound biological explana- tions from which meaning is produced, nothing more; and argued that social life was like a theatrical performance tion. Perhaps talking serves an important function that I have it is in the heat of these inscriptions that it is possible to see in which the individual “guides and controls the impres- overlooked, such as cementing something and its effects, as well as someone. Perhaps more sion…[others] form of him…by expressing himself in social bonds or exchanging useful information. I will consider theo- than ever, there is the need to emphasise the negativity such a way as to give them the kind of impression that ries of this kind later on. present in our time, and to reclaim the idea of an escape— will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his second, a sociobiologist might 1 argue that, with the evolution of we live under the apparent threat of an absolute capture own plan”. Goffman’s theory, radical and in many ways language, culture has somehow (from beginning to end), without a trace of shadows (also shocking when first published, is today not only un- got temporarily out of hand, and the cultural trait of speech has a way of global warming); ‘sustainability’ here is still a remarkable but might almost stand as a ‘to do’ list for been stretching the leash. How- fragile term and it is necessary to investigate the produc- self-improvers. Indeed, the failure to transform yourself ever, if talking is really wasteful of precious energy then the genes tive aspects of the viral process, the dynamic of parasites now counts as a dereliction of occupational duty. Profes- of the people who talk most will as carriers of meaning, particles that cross borders in dif- sional culture today has no concept of intrinsic self—it’s do less well and in time the genes will pull the leash in again. ferent ways and that are not reduced to the environments all appearance and mirage, refraction upon refraction, in Third, an evolutionary psy- in which they exist. However, nothing here indicates iner- which the voice plays a crucial role. In post-modern cul- chologist might argue that all this talking once had advantages for tia or inoperativeness, and the active face of this negative tures, authenticity as a credo is pretty well discredited— our ancestors and so we are stuck condition (waste, consumption) lies in a certain instru- the voice is a fabulous creator of simulacra, which is all with it now, even though it doesn’t benefit our genes any more. On mentalisation. It can be used, at the right time and at the that counts. this view we ought to be able to precise moment (long instants, decenniums, centuries): The voice is now seen as a critical component in pro- find the function of so much talk- ing in the lives of early hunter- folding, refolding; the inflexion as a line of flight, which, fessional success. Voice-training companies call them- gatherers. in this context, reinforces the presence, the stepping onto selves ‘The Winning Voice’2 or the ‘Voice of Influence’ all these suggestions have in common the fact that they ap- the terreiro. (“success is just as much about how you sound as about peal to genetic advantage for an explanation. Memetics provides a Warning: The above paragraphs (on paper, words; at a conference, how you look”). Books targeted at business executives 3 totally different approach. Rather talk) are not abstract constructions, but a narrative articulated with ma- bear titles like ‘The Leader’s Voice’, or promise to teach than asking what advantage talk- terial, plastic, concrete interventions. The text needs to be read/heard ing provides to the genes, we can together with the artwork and situations, upon a horizon that has been you to use your voice to deliver a sales pitch that’s guar- 4 5 ask what advantage it provides to doubled. For here, other things are said (nbp, meyou, re-projecting, anteed to sell. According to ‘Presenting to Win’, 63% 7 the memes. Now the answer is ob- system-cinema, transcrossing, etc-artist, would you like …? ) that ar- vious. Talking spreads memes. In ticulate themselves in a constantly changing dynamic. Just a little more, of company directors believed that presentation skills 8 other words, the reason we talk so slightly more effort. “Prova dos nove, alegria é” . Who sees it? were more important for career success than intelligence much is not to benefit our genes, 48 49 but to spread our memes. There are several ways of Ricardo Basbaum, ‘Who Sees Our Work?’, 7. References a number of different series 8. Reference to “A alegria é a prova dos 1. Erving Goffman, ‘The Presentation 4. Rene Grant-Williams, ‘Voice Power: text originally written for the International of works and projects that compose my nove”, Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto of Self in Everyday Life’, Preface,p. 15 using Your Voice to Captivate, looking at how memes exert pres- Seminars Museu Vale 2009, Museu Vale, Vila artwork. For instance, NBP refers to antropofágico, 1928. (London: Pelican Books, 1971) persuade, and Command Attention’ sure on us to keep talking, and Velha, ES, Brazil, March 2009. new Basis fo Personality, an on-going 2. www.thewinningvoice.com (New York: Amacom American I will consider three of them in project whisch atarted in 1990. The 3. Boyd Clarke, ‘The Leader’s Voice’ management Association, 2002) warning note points to the fact that (Select Books, 2002) 5. Khalid Aziz, ‘Presenting to Win’ more detail. the present text should be read taking in (London: Oak Tree Press, 2000) first, since talking is an ef- consideration the presence of the visual 6. see Rosanna Lippi-Green’s coruscating ficient way of propagating memes, and plastic propositions as well. attack on these in her perceptive analysis, Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / blackmore, Karpf & raudive memes that can get themselves or financial aptitude. Staff these days are expected to do chologists do just that), but for the spoken will (in general) be copied breakthrough memetic argument I am propos- more often than those that can- whatever’s required in order to create a good impression, An amazing experiment ing here it does not matter what not. So these kinds of memes will whether this means accent reduction (big in the United in electronic communication with the dead they are. The point is you are less spread in the meme pool and we 6 likely to want to pass on some will all end up talking a lot. States ), or a ‘voice lift’. Flab doesn’t only affect the boring thing you heard about the This argument is similar to stomach but the voice too. Once you’ve been Botoxed, konstantin raudive health of your neighbour’s rose the explanation I proposed for bushes than a rumour about what why we think so much—another tummy tucked and had liposuction, you don’t want an your neighbour was doing behind example of the ‘weed theory’ of ageing voice to let you down: $15,000 will buy you reju- Although we are far from grasping the full complexi- them. Such ‘say me’ memes will memes. Silence is like a beautifully therefore spread better than other weeded flowerbed, just waiting for venating vocal implants—cosmetic or vanity surgery for ties of the phenomenon as yet, the so-called ‘voices from memes and many people will get your favourite plants, and it does the voice.7 beyond’ are easily distinguishable from terrestrial human infected with them. not stay that way for long. A silent according to the New York Times, a sonorous voices. They speak in an unmistakable rhythm and usu- Excerpt from Susan Blackmore, The Meme person is an idle copying machine Machine. The Origins of Language, Oxford waiting to be exploited. Your voice has now been added to the checklist of perfection. ally employ several languages in a single sentence; the University Press, Oxford, 1999, pp. 83–84. brain is full of ideas, memories, 15 Reprinted by permission of Oxford Univer- thoughts to be shared and actions Whereas years ago, an American speech pathologist sentence construction obeys rules that differ radically sity Press. to be carried out; the social world recalls, he rarely had ordinary people who simply didn’t from those of ordinary speech and, although the voices is full of new memes being cre- ated, spread about and competing like the sound of their voice as patients, today they con- seem to speak in the same way as we do, the anatomy to be taken up by you and passed stitute one-third of his clients. Having a voice coach is of their ‘speech-apparatus’ must be different from our on again. But you cannot possibly 8 speak them all. Competition to now no more remarkable than having a personal trainer. own. […] Examination of our human speech-mechanism take charge of your voice is strong ironically, all the emphasis on changing the voice to has shown that the whole process of ‘speaking’ is a very —just as competition to grow in the garden is strong. Keeping produce the perfect presentation, or sway a judge, or sell complicated one; vocal chords, glottis and lungs all play silence is as hard work as weeding. more products, has left listeners with a problem in judg- their part. In producing the sound of a voice, the vocal so which memes will win in the competition to take over your ing what’s authentic, so necessitating the creation of yet chords are brought together by a system of rotatory car- voice? It may help to ask again another set of primers and guides—this time explaining tilages and a complicated interaction of small muscles; air, our familiar question – imagine a world full of brains, and far more how to decode other people’s voices and distinguish the being pressed out of the lungs, causes the vocal chords memes than can possibly find genuine voice from the phoney one. Books with titles like to vibrate, and the size and tension of the chords deter- homes. Which memes are more 9 likely to find a safe home and get ‘Never Be Lied To Again’, ‘I Know What You’re Think- mine the frequency of this vibration. The movement of passed on again? ing’,10 and ‘Reading People’,11 that require us to interpret the vocal chords influences the stream of air and this, in Certain memes are particu- larly easy to say, or almost force other people’s vocal clues and hear between the lines, to turn, sets off the resonance-frequencies in the oral cavity. their hosts to pass them on. These become in effect one-person spectrographs, are the di- The timbre of a voice depends largely on the shape of include bits of juicy scandal, ter- rifying news, comforting ideas of rect result of all the vocal makeovers encouraged by their the mouth. Voices are usually unique and everybody pos- various sorts, or useful instruc- predecessors. It can’t be accidental that the field of de- sesses, so to speak, his or her own voice, distinguished by tions. Some of these have their ‘spread me’ effect for good bio- ception studies has grown so much—there must be more its special, unmistakable tone-quality. […] logical and psychological reasons. deception about to study. let us ask ourselves briefly an important question: Perhaps they tap into need for sex, social cohesion, excitement, or does a thought consist of words? The answer is: no. avoiding danger. Perhaps people 50 51 pass them on in order to conform, ‘English with an Accent: Language, 8. Peter Jaret, ‘My Voice Has Got to Go’, 11. Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, ‘Reading people’ Excerpt from Konstantin Raudive, ‘The Electronic voice phenomena (EVPs) to be better liked, to enjoy the ideology and Discrimination in the new York Times, 21.7.05 (London: Vermillion, 1999) Language of the Voices and How They are sections of noise on the radio or other person’s surprise or laugh- united States’ (London: Routledge, 1997) 9. David J. Lieberman, ‘Never Be Lied To Speak’, Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment electronic recordings, alleged to reveal the ter. Perhaps the information will 7. see ‘Add a ‘voice lift’ to your tummy again’ (New York: St Martin’s Press, Excerpt from Anne Karpf, ‘Changing Voices,’ in Electronic Communication with the Dead, sound of voices speaking with words. In tuck’, 19.04.04, www.CNN.com; Toby 1998) The Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Colin Smythe Limited, 1971. Reprinted by Germany, the parapsychologist Konstantin be genuinely useful to the other moore, ‘Tune In, Stay Young’, The 10. Lillian Glass, ‘’I Know What You’re Talent, Bloomsbury, London, 2006. permission from Colin Smythe Limited. Raudive popularised the idea in his book, person. We can certainly study Times, 21.04.04; Claire Coleman, ‘Voice Thinking’ (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Breakthrough (1971), the culmination of all these reasons (and indeed psy- lift’, Daily Mail, 3.10.05 Wiley, 2002) research involving over 400 people and 100,000 audiotapes. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Raudive, bradley & hatzfeld

Thoughts consist of psychic particles that stand in the if played skillfully. It’s frequently enjoyed not just by the into Her Nek. Do Y Boys lyk Meet? I arsk. same relation to reality as words. As we all know, there are young men but by the (sometimes sharp-tongued) women Well hear It is. We mayk Fyr many forms of language: the language of the battlefield, and girls too, as well as workers during their breaks and an cook Y Pig. Wen we hav et we sleep sutch as we can apon Y San. the language of reports, the language of everyday life, an pupils in the school playground. All Nyt Y Fowls ar skreeking ex-cathedra-language, and so forth. This means that to verbal sparring is really just a longer-lasting dig; more an Y Wayvs crash apon Y Roks. I ly in Y Dark an star to think. think of a language form is to think of a form of life. precisely, it’s a dig that provokes a riposte or one that’s Har Tyms for Peeps. extended. Once the exchange has involved several players, Y Childer ar cryin in YHar Tyms an Tym is shor for shor. a duel of words ensues and the spectators await the out- Dark. come of lightning exchanges of biting verbal jousting that We mus star to bil but how? sparkle with metaphor, semantic inversion, unsuspected So mutch is loss! babblings from france But lissen. imagery and situational comedy. It’s partly and quite fre- Y Girls hav all star to sing (or Babel in the Île-de-France) an they ar singing Y old ole Story quently a matter of getting one up on the other person, of how Y Werl got mayd. marc hatzfeld but sparring is more than just an exercise in single combat. How ther was Darknes but not to be afray. It’s initially successful when the listeners, who are there to No! There are three types of verbal artistry related specifically be impressed after all, are made to laugh; beyond laugh- For from Y Darknes Y grayt Curayter curayted to spoken language that people in the banlieues deploy ter, though, the aim of sparring is to earn the audience’s Y hole Werl an all Y Peeps with gusto. The first of these is called the ‘dig’. The dig knowing approval of the phenomenal oral and intellectual an Childer an Beasts an Skullters an Ordys. is a short, very sharp verbal jab directed at a target by prowess of the combatants. But sparring depends above Y Teckteem we wer calld a casual speaker in a display of quick-fire humour.P eople all for its success on a shared view of the world’s essential to do His Work an so we mayk Y Werl All New For Him. Alexandre Bezu used to say mettre en boîte, meaning ‘to take the mickey absurdity, a view that’s fierce and at the same time sharp- A typeface for the suburbs An how we work All as Wun. (attempt to transcribe verlan) (out of someone)’; in the south of France, they’re more witted. In actual fact, it’s the world around them that’s the By Any, All! they sing. http://www.admirabledesign.com/Une- So it is an so it is. police-pour-la-banlieue likely to say chambrer, i.e. ‘to tease (someone)’; in the butt of the two or more players’ savage humour; their tar- An now all Y Childer ar carm housing estates, it’s vanner: ‘to slag (someone off )’. You get is often other people, those impossibly distant others an Y Dogs ar sylen. An so I fall to sleep. Wen Y Sun no ordy trap your opponent/friend in a verbal net, then you loose who haven’t the slightest clue about who we are, any more gets up we rys too an look arown a well-aimed dart at the unfortunate target. The dig hurts, than they have about life, youth, what we’re actually doing at ar new Lan. no skullter Y Sky is ful of Clowds but above all it makes people laugh. When it comes unex- here at all; the others, those pathetic ‘fools’ whose instinct but ther is no mor Rayn will bradley pectedly or after a time-lag, it takes a person completely for humiliation is repaid in equal measure by the mockery nor any mor Storms. But Y Lan is wyld! Y STORM IS FINNISH an we— by surprise, leaving them without a comeback. The dig especially reserved for them. Y Shor is all Roks an San prowd Peeps of Y Teckteem!— represents the sudden appearance of the absurd in a hyper- The third linguistic device manipulated with great an beyon Y Shor ar mor roks drag up lyk retched crawly Things an beyon that wyld Hils apon this forsaykn Shor. civilised and highly regulated yet sordid world. It’s a side- agility in the banlieue is ‘slam’. Originating in the black all coverd wiv Trees. Come, Peeps! I crys. long glance at reality. Within certain groups, the boys slag ghettos of the United States and readily adopted by Beyon that we carnt see Stan together! By Any, All! so we clym up. Lyk wet Dogs we work all Over each other off non-stop; it’s a game that leaves few marks corresponding social environments, slam is the verbal All Day we clym till we ar Tym an pull ar Cargo from Y See. 52 53 at Y Foot of Y Hils. Ar Boat is loss. An ther we fyn Y perfek Syt. Many Crayts ar broke an many Its Tym. I call all Y Peeps arown. Beasts too ar loss. All Y Boys of Y Teckteem Sad Porker lys apon Y San an all Y Girls of Y Mahk Ting. Her Eys roll up an She oynks In sylens we sit evry wun lyk Y Devvils Wyf Hersel. an befor us is Y Syt. I tayk my Nyf an stik it Gud We let Y grayt Curayter Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / bradley, hatzfeld & stein into ar Myns an in sylens equivalent of a door slamming. It’s just a domesticated en route the John Cassavetes, the Antonin Artauds, the Y Nayls ar rustd. He fills ar Myns wiv Inner Vation. They fell in Y See wen Y Boat He curayted Y Werl an now version of the preceding devices and one that’s a tiny Rimbauds—all those who live for the moment. Its other wer loss. But we don myn. we curayt Y Werl All New bit elitist at that. Just as towards the end of the Middle not inconsiderable quality is that it confers a public sta- We mus bild. For Him. So it is an so it is. We clym up an fall down Tym is shor for shor Ages the troubadours merrily displayed their powers of tus on artists and acknowledges them by publicising their an still we bild. an so befor Nyt falls improvisation, slammers, too, are expected to leave the work—something that never fails to surprise them. We mayk Y Skullter big we mus star to work. an tall an wyd. In Y har Groun we dig. safety of the perimeter and balance on a rope of words, like slammers are surprised because it doesn’t even occur We mayk Its Eys big an wyd This is Y secon Day. verbal tight-rope walkers without the benefit of a safety to them that they might have any particular status as art- an we mayk Its Teef so sharp. Fyv Days we hav an no mor. O Skullter! O grayt smyling Skull! So it is an so it is. It is ar lyf. net. Slam in its original form is based on improvisation ists, no more than it does to rappers or to street artists for Eet up Y Ole an giv us Y New! But Y Boys ar strong an work har and competition among slammers. Whatever its ori- that matter: they slam the way they talk, knowing full Mayk Y Werl All New For Him! for they ar filld wiv Inner Vation But we hav no Ordy. an they wil mayk Y Werl All New. gins, slam is a dramatisation of the type of metaphorical well that the insolence lies more in their language than No Ordy no Skullter. vivacity that we’ve already seen demonstrated in the dig in themselves. They’re merely a temporary conduit for So it is an so it is. In Y Nyt I wayk. We mus hav an Ordy for ar work. Y Dogs all bark lyk mad and verbal sparring. Located somewhere between theatre it. This language has neither name nor stable syntax but We mus hav an Ordy to Open In. an howl an run arown. and poetry, slam is an opportunity for those masters of those who are fond of categories like to give it a name, Y Ordys hear ar clevver I see Straynges in Y Dark. but we hav met sutch Ordys befor. Straynge Peeps ar creeping rown. verbal bling recently arrived from the heart of the Afri- so why not call it verlan?* The transgressive nature of We mus think. But they arnt Peeps! can savannah or the shores of the Mediterranean or the the language of the banlieues reaches its logical conclu- We mus hav Inner Vation. They ar Ordys! All Y Boys of Y Teckteem They hav paynt on ther fays forests of Colombia to take the floor. sion in this French variation of backslang, since verlan an all Y Girls of Y Mahk Ting an they hav Nyfs. its greatest virtue for the purposes of our present no longer functions as a language as such: it disappears. we sit an in sylens we think. Wayk wayk! I crys. We mus fyt! So we mayk ar plan. Evry Body wayks up an we fyt. discussion is primarily that it overthrows that symbol of Wen Y Nyt falls we star. I stik wun wiv my Nyf an He dys. linguistic dictatorship represented by the written word, Y Boys hav fown Y Ordys. Ar work mayks us strong. They ar not far but they liv We ar Y Teckteem the imperial written word. Slam, like the dig and verbal in ther own Werl. an We ar filld wiv Inner Vation. sparring, legitimises verbal artistry in an environment They do not no Y grayt Curayter. Y Ordys no they carnt win the making of americans an so They run. that keeps exponents of the written word at a distance: But we wil mayk ther Werl So ther ar Ordys hear. All New an They wil no Him. slam is the acrobatics of the spoken word raised to the gertrude stein Y Girls go in Y Dark Gud We says. an fyn an Ordy Boy in Y Dark. We mus hav an Ordy. level of a fine art.I n this sense, it may well be reconnect- He is by His self. No Ordy no Skullter. ing with certain cultural phenomena that pre-date the Some time then there will be very kind of a history of We hav Inner Vation they says. So it is. Hear It is. But We mus hav a lyf Ordy. written word, a furious, destructive archaism that relo- every one who ever can or is or was or will be living. He lyks Inner Vation. Y Dogs wil hav Y ded wun. cates the present moment, what’s happening right now, Some time then there will be a history of every one from He lyks Y Girls in Y Dark. In Y Morn Y Boys dig down We hav mor they says. sum mor an cut down Trees. at the centre of the world by rejecting the arguments and their beginning to their ending. Sometime then there will It is over hear. This is Y thir Day. expertise of organised memory and capital. In this way, be a history of all of them, of every kind of them, of This way! they says. We mus mayk ar Boat agayn Ha ha! Now we hav an Ordy but firs we mus mayk Y Skullter it restores a pleasure in the instantaneous and the vola- every one, of every bit of living they ever have in them, in Y Bag. Tyd up tyt. so all Day we work an work. tile to both writers and listeners, qualities that are tend- of them when there is never more than a beginning to An now we sleep. We cut wiv Aks an then wiv Nyf But all Nyt we keep an Ey an dry Y Wood over Y Fyr. ing to disappear from creative possibilities. It encounters them, of every kind of them, of every one when there for the Ordys. 54 55 On Y forth Day It is Y fyf Day. *Tr’s Note: term derived from vers-l’en, See the French original version we bild Y Skullter. where the syllables of the word l’envers http://translate.eipcp.net/strands/04/hatzfe We tayk ar Ordy an we Open In. We plant its Legs in Y Hole (the other way round, or the opposite of the ldstrands01fr/?lid=hatzfeld-strands01fr Y Skullter is gud an strong. we hav dug. norm) are reversed. It has gud big eys an sharp Teef. All Y Teckteem work lyk Dogs an Excerpt from Marc Hatzfeld, Babblings from We Open up Y Skullter We bild it gud an tall. France, or Babel in the Île-de-France, trans. an we put Y Ordy In. Chop! Chop! Nayl! Nayl! Mary O’Neill. Tyd up tyt in Y grayt smyling Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / bradley, Stein & La barbara

Skull he carnt escayp. is very little beginning and then there is an ending, there We tayk Eggs from Y Fowls an put Y Eggs arown Y Skullter. will then sometime be a history of every one there will Sum Eggs we put in Y Skullter. be a history of everything that ever was or is or will be Now it is Tym. We mayk Fyr arown Y grayt Skullter. them, of everything that was or is or will be all of any Y Ordys ar hear now. one or all of all of them. Sometime then there will be a They ar all arown but they ar afrayd. history of every one, of everything or anything that is all Y Fyr clyms up Y Skull them or any part of them and sometime then there will an Y Ordy ther he stars skreeking. Y Skullter eets Him up. All is gud. be a history of how anything or everything comes out We ar filld agayn wiv Inner Vation from every one, comes out from every one or any one an all Y Ordys run into Y Hils. Now see Ordys! from the beginning to the ending of the being in them. We mayk Y Werl All New! Sometime then there must be a history of every one who In Y Morn we star to bild ar Boat agayn. ever was or is or will be living. As one sees every one Y Ordys hav gon in their living, in their loving, sitting, eating, drinking, we wil not see Them agayn. An nor mus we go bak sleeping, walking, working, thinking, laughing, as any after we Open In. one sees all of them from their beginning to their end- So it is an so it is. Y Skullter is finnish. ing, sees them when they are little babies or children or Y Skullter is ole an we mus mayk young grown men and women or growing older men and Y Werl All New. We mus not go bak. women or old men and women then one knows it in them We mus mayk ar Boat agayn that sometime there will be a history of all of them, that an sayl far over Y see. It is Tym. See. sometime all of them will have the last touch of being, a Soon all Y Peeps wil meet history of them can give to them, sometime then there in Y Lan far over Y See an tell of Skullters we hav mayd will be a history of each one, of all the kinds of them, of all arown Y Werl. all the ways any one can know them, of all the ways each An Y grayt Curayter wil smyl an He will say Gud Boys! one is inside her or inside him, of all the ways anything Gud Girls! of them comes out from them. Sometime then there will We mayk Y Werl All New! Stan together! be a history of every one and so then every one will have By Any, All! in them the last touch of being a history of any one can Excerpt from Will Bradley, ‘No Ordy No give to them. Skulter,’ in Magnetic Promenade and Other Sculpture Parks, ed. Chris Evans, Studio This is then a beginning of the way of knowing eve- Voltaire 2004. rything in every one, of knowing the complete history of each one who ever is or was or will be living. This is then a little description of the winning of so much wisdom. Joan La Barbara 56 Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation, 1974 Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans Reprinted by permission of the Estate was published in 1925. The book is one of of Gertrude Stein, through its Literary Stein’s first experiments with a modernist Executor, Mr. Stanford Gann, Jr. of Levin literary style and is an interpretation in and Gann, P.A. prose form of Cubism’s disruption of perspective, and presentation of objects and experiences from every angle. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / La barbara & Mcluhan

58 59 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Mcluhan & yampolsky

Plain talk voice devoured:

Marshall Mcluhan artaud and borges on dubbing In “The Answer” section of this desk clerks, or, at best, for minor In the New York Herald for January ad we are told that: “In the busi- bureaucrats. Can’t the big man hire 5, 1859, it carried a long Gertrude mikhail yampolsky ness and social world, the ability a dozen professors of English as Stein sort of dry-goods poem, to express ideas with clarity … his private secretaries? Hasn’t he which in part ran as follows: accuracy … and force is the most anything to do besides avoid the Antonin Artaud’s article ‘Les souffrances du “dubbing”’ highly prized gift of all.” In the pitfalls of English? Are all those COME, COME, TIME, Time COME, COME, TIME, TIME (The Torments of Dubbing) appears to have been writ- “Sparkling Chapters Like These” thoughts that he turns into the 1 THE TIME HAS COME 1933 division are listed such chapters as: masterful actions of production ten in . Discovered soon after his death, it was pub- and distribution just translations of WHAT IS TO BE DONE? lished posthumously. At first glance, it appears to be a Plain talk or double talk? puny little words? IS THE QUESTION WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Words and wisdom shall never vocational-guidance investiga- straightforward vindication of those French actors who IS THE QUESTION meet?” tion has turned up the curious sold their voices for pittances to American film companies fact that executives of whatever WHAT SHALL BE DONE? Do you want ideas or plain educational background do show an WHAT SHALL BE DONE? engaged in dubbing their own productions for the foreign ideas?” aptitude for words that is more than MARK EVERY ARTICLE MARK EVERY ARTICLE market. A closer look at the text will, however, reveal a Is this a book for Freudened usual. Here is unexpected confirma- WAY Fräuleins?” tion of the ancient Ciceronian claim connection between ‘Les souffrances du “dubbing”’ and for eloquence as training for practi- WAY a whole constellation of aesthetic issues that transcend “Gadgets of Language”, “The cal life. Before Cicero, the Greek WAY DOWN Glamour of Punctuation”, and Sophists had taught how to make TO SOME PRICE WHICH WILL the narrow limits of the essay’s ostensible topic. “Turnabout Rhetoric”.Until you men wise and powerful by making MAKE IT on April 19, 1929, Artaud wrote to Yvonne Allendy have read this book people may them eloquent. But they saw no TO SOME PRICE WHICH WILL have laughed when you opened split between words and wisdom, MAKE IT to inform her that he was completing work on the screen- your big mouth, but now you can as this ad does. Man, they said, was sell AND GO QUICK, play for the film TheD ybbuk, which was to contain ‘sound learn in no time “how to put wings distinguished from the brutes by sell AND GO QUICK, on your words” and how to present his aptitude for speech. Speech and sell AND GO QUICK, fragments’: “I have decided to introduce sound and even your ideas and “make them stick”. reason were one, and the develop- ladies talking portions into all my screenplays since there has small wonder that “the experts” ment of either involved the other. are in dither about the work. Harry Ladies, all this has been done in a Therefore an encyclopedic pro- most thorough manner. been such a push toward the talkie that in a year or two no A. Overstreet reports: “It’s been 2 gramme of studies was necessary to OUR GOODS SHALL BE SOLD CHEAP! making me over.” C.B. Larrabee one will want silent films any more.” The script of The produce eloquence. And eloquence OUR GOODS SHALL BE SOLD CHEAP!! says that it sent him “over the was power, wisdom and political in THIS GREAT SELL OUT. Dybbuk did not survive, but its very title is highly sug- dam”. Presumably, with the art of prudence at the same time. in THIS GREAT SELL OUT. gestive. A dybbuk is a character in Jewish folklore, a per- plain talk mastered, you can expect Today, it is not the classroom to explain Kafka in ten simple nor the classics that are the reposi- Fifty years before Gertrude Stein son inhabited by the spirit of someone who has died and words or the newest industrial tories of models of eloquence, but developed an artistic prose for the who speaks through the mouth of that person. The ghost process in two or three phrases. the ad agencies. Whereas the older recording of the mental gropings There is no end to the mak- concept of eloquence linked it to of the very young and the very of the deceased torments the living person, causing him ing of books and promises on the public responsibility and ceremony stupid, Macy’s copy writers had to writhe and to rave, forcing him to blaspheme against theme that: and a unified programme for en- mastered the same persuasive art of The Big Jobs usually go to men listing the passions on the side of plain talk. Books such as The Art of his will. This folkloric character obviously recapitulates, who are able to express them- Plain Talk are perhaps still behind reason and virtue, the new school 1859 selves … but never to those who of eloquence is virtually demagog- Macy’s ad of and way behind 61 are always groping for words. Gertrude Stein in the techniques ic in its headlong exploitation of 1. Antonin Artaud, Oeuvres complètes, vol. All this seems to have little relation words and emotions for the flattery either of following or of control- 3 (Paris: Gallimard, Paris, 1978), ling the childish mental processes pp. 85–87. to the laconic and ungrammati- of the consumer. 2. Ibid., p. 151. cal stammerings of those strong, Just about the time when the of those locked in the mass dream. classical programme of studies col- silent tycoons of yesteryear. Surely Excerpt from Marshall McLuhan, The all this talk about how to talk is lapsed, Macy’s was experimenting Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man, intended for a pygmy tribe of with the hypnotic power of words. The Vanguard Press, 1951. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / yampolsky & Mann

in its own way, the problematic of dubbing, though in an maybe if you hit it hard inverted form: in dubbing, the film star diverts the live actor of his voice: through the dybbuk, the voice of the chris mann deceased inhabits a living body. nevertheless, in both cases the situation remains Listening, a bit like dreaming i so which of the, whatever, theAp- mour. it is afterall the classic trans- guess, happens in the middle of a ples, is pathological, the Second? formative object. which is only to much the same; the voice resides in someone else’s body. sentence. unlike the subject or verb why, coz its Jealous, of the Alter- say that its a Name. (though of Given his love for anagrams and of glossolalia, Artaud (the object being but a container native, of the Trauma? and all this course any word will Do. and coz of anxiety), it doesnt wait til the because abstraction Fucks? and coz the known is that which cant be might well have identified one with the other, purposely end. (though of course not All Mind is a particular Kind of mind, Thought, and coz its the Sequence retaining the foreign, English spelling of the word dub- acts is paranoid ..) the hour then this makes it What? i mean the of, of, of Notes that make it Whis- 3 is just a form of avoidance. This General is not the Victim here. (i tleable, the Subject then is that bing: dubbing—dibbouk . The overtly satanic subtext but is not what makes it banal. the mean the general is by Definition name given to a style of Cop. the of an article about dubbing, which is about something invention of the Creative Witness satisfied. (dear you, i love you, will latin for this is Form. (Grammar, is what makes it banal. and while you be my Price .. (the great thing that which turns the Unconscious “thoroughly ghoulish”—the snatching of the personal- theres some debate as to whether about words, you can do anything Negation into the Conscious Affir- ity, of the soul—is crucial. the first fetish is Yes, its pretty you want, cept Really. mation, the standard Addiction .. clear that those who say no have the beautiful thing about facts and as you is my unconscious, and Excerpt from Mikhail Yampolsky, Voice The question of the reciprocal alienation of voice and Devoured: Artaud and Borges on Dubbing, no idea what theyre talking about. is that they can be understood. therefore Lack an Object, we’re trans. Larry P. Joseph, October, Vol. 64 body was by no means an academic one for Artaud; rather, Negation is simply Delusional. this makes them More or Less left with the choice of whether (Spring, 1993), pp. 57–77. it struck to the very core of the artistic problems that con- and anyway, it is Work that aspires redundant. and while humans may this is a Symptom, or a, Field, you Images: to be the patient. the rest just want well be the only humans who can know, whatyouseeiswhatyouget, Pierre Bismuth fronted him, tormented him, and, in the end, drove him to to Associate. (theory calls this choose to be unpredictable, and Sense, the successful defEnce The Jungle Book Project, 2002 Help. the police call it Shit (and this may well avail them of at least (where you both blame it for not Details insanity. For Artaud the mistrust of the audible word—the Drawings on tracing paper coz assumptions is well Organised Some chance of being wrong .. i being something Else, And love it word that exists prior to its utterer—is central. Its origins repressions, theyre right)) and mean if language were less uncon- for not being You. This, as freud Coz its all then so Messy, and coz scious, would it be more, more, i used to say, is Shit. (twodownfou- are obscure, for it is as if prompted and spoken by someone it takes a cop to know what shes knOw, would it be more Econom- racross two letters, It. the Shrink. else—a predecessor—and in it the speaker loses his iden- listening For, the Self is but just ic? (.. this is the difference between (fuck, what Is this, some sort of the Other Unconscious. you know, Fucked and fucked Up. i mean it private joke? (though not knowing tity. The word is always a repetition; it never originates the Subject. (so much for .. ) so no doesnt Necessarily take a cunt to Who’s, is of course the demand from within the body of the speaker. If Artaud strives to surprises There. make the distinction, but .. that it fail to Translate. (the past so if knowledge were less, De- and now, as to Confusion, that of Past, Fucked. ( .. the Subject, implant the word in the body, in breathing, in gesture, it rived, would it be more .. what, moment of grace when the same the amnesiac Object. Ashamed. is in order to restore the corporeality and individuality more Charming? .. and while the is sure the Same (though the same Humiliated. i’m bored. (not bad. witness is indeed a study in Form is not Invariably gullible (i mean whatdya call, what Is that, Haiku of its source. We must prevent “the theft of the word”. (and the Unsaid is more than a in english the object is a Hostage for Me? (though not All metaphors Jacques Derrida describes Artaud’s dilemma as follows: Patch on Beauty), this is not the (and this is someone who needs is Voyeurs. some still need a noun same as saying its Depressed. nor to Like the past) .. in English, to make them come. “If my speech is not my breath [souffle], if my letter is not should it necessarily suggest itself then, the object experiences the so while thinking may or may my speech, this is because my spirit was already no longer a type of Molestation. and anyway, subject as Hysteric. i mean ask not happen in, whatever, Knowl- why would you think of this as Anyone .. and as the object suf- edge only happens in English, my body, my body no longer my gestures, my gestures no information? i mean (and i use i fers this, Betrayal, this dependent and as english, as we all know, is longer my life. The integrity of the flesh torn by all these here as a matter of Style, as some Accounting, ( .. i mean the art of Neurotic, essentially we resort 4 acoustic neutral halfway between context was yet to be invented, so to thinking coz english doesnt differences must be restored in the theatre.” You and Ah, as a Theory, of what god gave them Cash .. and as any Work (Displacement, and then, a bland might really look Like) .. i transaction is just the deferring WhyNot). so while its true the self mean data may well Dream of Me of compexity, is a serial practi- is def a Cure, its probably mere 3. For a discussion of Artaud’s anagrams, see Mikhail Yampolsky, ‘“O stat’e (and someone someWhere may cal joke, a sadist with (i mean the the cure of You for Me. in other grazhiny Shimchik- Kliushchchinskoi’”, well call this Incest), but thats not PastasStraightman has gotta stop. words, Why Not. i mean as far as Kinovedcheskie zapiski 9 (1991), yet anything that either of us seri- fuckin Melodrama. i mean the illnesses go, it brushes Up, speaks pp. 129–33. 4. Jacque Derrida, Writing and Difference, ously Need to Know (as if we was view from the top Always includes quite Well .. trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of but a grammars Second Language, the word stop. so how long should this silence Be, Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978), p. 179. you know, the Said Effect, of .. ttToBe thinks it has a sense of hu- long enough to think of it a Bully,

63 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Mann long enough to celebrate Grace? its this Process is its memory), i mean its not Who, but Why does Memory? so whats the mnemonic more important, more Funda- tween the word and its breath. (the i mean i guess its a form of ma- Mathematics, the more or less the music stop (though again the for this, This? (whats the mne- mental? isnt logic Marvellous. (so, Word anyway is a compromise, lingering, this Being of an object random assortment of transitional dead are nothing if not Privatised monic for stop, Stop? just as well if Three was less of a Hypnotic, halfway between the unutterable (an idiom that could suck start a objects, is a useful definition of ab- (and of course vivaldi is well the minimalists here speak english. would it be more like Two? why, and the just plain wrong. OneEleven if only it had pause .. sence. whether its as useful as cash known as a purgative of the poor dear, you, i’d like to think of this is three the Unconscious of two? so, theres Learning, or, a Cure. i she loved the law. loved being is another matter. However, and from public places .. (so is music as memory. as if what, as if this like theres a Logical Link between mean knowing what youre talking represented. loved pornography. this is the point, its nowhere near maybe better thought of as Arti- were some sort of Mood? (it is of them? about is no Proof. and salting jokes, well jokes were something as elegant as Credit, and credit is ficial Trauma? (and as addictions course possible that all versions (knowledge is therapeutic. and as agency with Data .. i mean while else. jokes were too much like sex what you have in Spades til you are those things you cant let go of This is autistic, but theres just paranoia is the highest Form of you can obviously change the .. Latent. which is proper i guess learn how to Speak. welcome to of coz theys cunt invisible, and as no way to tell. what Is clear, but, knowledge, its only proper that meaning by Intending to (though i for Question. as if it was lost in the Self. where saying nowt is traumas are the things you cant let is that they Sulk, a whole bunch. its as pragmatic as it is. (and as dont know exactly what you mean thought. a demonstration obses- the perfect way of staying mum. go of coz theys obviously Seen .. which is a measure of something the past is just a way of making here by While (course not, have sion .. so now, if you dont mind, i which is of course the perfect and while frustration can of course vulnerable, a bickering despair, a something Present (though it is i told you?)), i mean Basically a think i’d like to be compensated. quasi panicked definition of Luck. be beautifully Gratifying (and this wistful loss, a sullen self defining true that neither of these constitute sentence is a Theory, or a run at cash or plastic? .. dunno. which or the Beat .. is indeed the charge of aesthetics moment, music. i mean shit hap- Knowledge .. they do however theory. in this sense its just like would you say had the better and coz learning is based on disap- (which is more or less Adequate .. pens when theres a failed attempt both do a fine line in paranoia. the previous theory, cept Less Proof? .. so is Two what three pointment (which is essentially the i mean what is the advantage that to bill the experience as symbolic. (indeed its something of a habit .. so (though this lessness is here would call a Debt? i mean they put same as saying that knowledge is a accrues from the symptom being Heaven (the unconscious, the )) anyway, as i was saying, neither suspect nor subtle, just Time into logic for this very rea- measure of entropy), the Object, misunderstood? i mean the trick is model of redundancy, the argu- mirrors post date music. anyway, a grammar considerably more son .. ok, so which has the Smaller in all Its expectant glory, is mere a to create that which requires nei- ment for incompleteness (so they post date lullabys. i mean ask complex than the vocabulary it proof? like you wanna use Less as way of harvesting this entropy and ther desire Nor memory. i mean, which is More psychological, One anyone. which is the very Point wants to play .. and coz its so the measure of More? too fuckin putting it to Use. the other word you knOw, its the work that does or Two?)), anyway, you know, of mistaken identity. you know, almost Circular, its an argument Much .. though of course not All for this is News (which is filed most of the work. Heaven, Projection, the law abid- where everything is Fine so long that clearly aint that Wrong .. the facts is axioms. some decisions just somewhere tween coke and pepsi. guilt is a Hybrid. of opportunity ing Witness that couldnt translate as its not something Else. so while Echo BrickWall liason, recursion Are. which is why god invented (the collateral benefit of this sum- and meditation. Seriously .. i mean Now then even if it Tried .. fuckin knowledge always aspires to be with Attitude. and while grammar Lice. (other moments of proof in- mary is that it explains away the its like defining And by its Curato- neurotic. i meam all habit Does is Assumed, unconscious, a form of is just well intentioned Knowledge clude, Entropy, manners, a reper- initial memory or experience, the rial function. and as art is a sort Confuse stuff .. dear, um, i think i Given, its also selfevidently Jeal- (you know, like the commodity toire of compromise, Rehearsings Subject, as essentially irrelevant, of Rented Catatonia .. (one of the changed my mind. ous of its Gift. (and clearly not All and i Share a price ifandonlyif of Desire (another of those tourist its sole purpose being only to be common fantasies of objects, is to while words do indeed mani- narcissists is masochists (though i Pay it), and if the answer to substitute cruelties (you know, the Indulged, a la Price, you know, be born yesterday. coz Yesterday fest many of their Own, its the while nonexistence has no Subject the question Whatsortofdiffer- ones that come with descriptions the quanta of Change .. i mean seems such a Nice assumption. Company Issue blindspots that (i mean if yous a Formalist), it encedoesamistakehereMake, is of the way things .. unless .. un- believe That and youll believe .. maybe slightly claustrophobic, but really are the most endearing. like sure knows how to Fuck ( .. blah Arbitrary, and the error is purely less of course youre not Expert in like if the ambition of language is .. and Easily Irritated, but .. which the fact that theyre instinctively blah Bitch and the Fictive Igno- Decorative, somehow innocently yourself .. to have nothing to say, to be Bored is why i guess theys always so, defensive around silence. which rance .. other uses of the word accused of Meaning, .. the first thing we’re Told about or transparent, to trade occasion- Defensive .. becomes of course something of This, is eas.. criteria. with bells on. its fun knowledge is that it has no uncon- ally in finer points of law, is it now, while translating the subject its own obsession, what with its so how Does one rehearse the role watching them cope. platitudes on scious. just a way of jumping to any wonder then the bourgeois into its Thought, is admittedly endless parade of manic Pauses of subject, how does one Apply? ice. collateral, franchised Off the conclusions. while both singing speak so well? and if of course something of a formalist exercise, and all. (i mean whats the fuss, a and to Whom, the Statement? books .. and coz noise Amplifies its and escaping what its Not. (i mean Being Right is mere a form of youve got to admit that defining it hypocrite is merely someone who Read My Lips (as if AsIf was signal (though whether its noise Really.) and what we Learn, is that Acting Out, a picture Petulance, an Object was pretty fuckin smart. has just forgotten how to count. something less than Said), This or Context is moot, or Both? .. or, complicit starts with a C. Instru- (.. here there should be a phrase downmarket, but Smart. and coz though here of course, ignorance Isnt It .. This isnt It .. sort of, both (and coz the signal is strange- mentalisation does not. instrumen- with the words Ego and Closet in nothing That smart ever had a Mo- is classically Strategic. a stylish Waltz time .. ly where you left it)), and coz lots talisation starts with its own fuckin some ordinary juxtaposition, but tive (cept maybe the cradling of Hesitation ..) Symptoms, Facts, i mean the subject carries more of loops is Bubbles dontyouknow Alphabet. that though is the nature it is too hard to make one without anxiety (i mean of course Pauses AmbivalAnce (and then something words than the object (cept of (feedback, the working point of of self cure. the byproduct is demonstrating the WellFormed Rhyme. though only with irony. about how to avoid frustration, or course in german, which thinks definition, the well paid Ratio, always a mind. me and one end of Framing prob, so its better left as i mean if disney were to curate some other placebo You .. i mean solipsism is a Lubricant .. and if the witness were invariably the stick .. i mean in the expression a slightly used As Is. i mean its a a show on irony, would it look how lucky do you think context music is a professional blindspot Unsuitable (as opposed to being twoplustwoequalsfour, with whom bit awkward, coz its clearly Not any different? different to what, a Is, Very, Almost, None? .. so no (for its own good, i mean its for statistically somewhere else (i do You identify? .. maybe if you Yet or only a paradox Wannabe. Spelling Bee? something some- disrespect, but would you mind its own Good), so it manages a mean the listener is too synthetic hit it Hard .. This, though, is what objects Do, thing and the library of fines. and awfully if we considered you Reasonable tautology. (which is a by Half, Wannabe Context oneo- the regressed object, the subject of you know, rabbit On. and This is just imagine how funny that would Latent for the time being? or, put bit like saying existence is a Sort of hone, the Afterthought, some busted speech, a That which how the subject experiences itself, be in Sanskrit, This That and the it another way, when is it reason- Thought (complicit fuckin bitch is uncannily Fingered, as some sort as a form of Catharsis? i mean Thatettes. able to think of the subject as a ..)) BorIng. or maybe just lazy. of Container .. i mean it Knows i’m happy that its self sustaining ok, so what did i Say? would it be mere Detail? like the subject is anyway, you can fill in the blanks. all there is to know. the point is to and all, but .. i mean if You were reasonable to be jealous? or, how more Karmic than its object? so so, who Suffers from projection, Chris Mann works with dense, often make it jealous of its Ignorance. designing a Therapy, would it ever do you sublimate Listening, by the question as to Whosgoingtow- the Poor? (i mean what comes first, parenthetical texts. Freely composing his material, his readings are performed at an and as the witness is now its occur to you to make it Stupid? having nothing to say? would it ininthethirdrace is more important Therefore or its Demonstration? incredibly fast pace, exploring the textures, Memory (some would rather say fuckin stroke of genius. be reasonable to think of this as than the Odds? well maybe not (you know, that which comes be- gestures and philosophy of speech. 64 65 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Cixous

the laugh of the medusa linear or ‘objectified’, generalised: she draws her story into history. hélène cixous There is not that scission, that division made by the common man between the logic of oral speech and the It is time for women to start scoring their feats in written logic of the text, bound as he is by his antiquated relation and oral language. —servile, calculating—to mastery. From which proceeds every woman has known the torment of getting the niggardly lip service that engages only the tiniest part up to speak. Her heart racing, at times entirely lost for of the body, plus the mask. words, ground and language slipping away—that’s how in women’s speech, as in their writing, that element daring a feat, how great a transgression it is for a woman that never stops resonation, which, once we’ve been per- to speak—even just open her mouth—in public. A double meated by it, profoundly and imperceptibly touched by distress, for even if she transgresses, her words fall almost it, retains the power of moving us—that element is the Hélène Cixous, 2004 always upon the deaf male ear, which hears in language song; first music from the first voice of love that is alive in only that which speaks in the masculine. every woman. Why this privileged relationship with the it is by writing, from and toward women, and by tak- voice? Because no woman stockpiles as many defences for ing up the challenge of speech that has been governed by countering the drives as does a man. You don’t build walls the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place around yourself, you don’t forego pleasure as ‘wisely’ other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic; as he. Even if phallic mystification has generally con- that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break taminated good relationships, a woman is never far from out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into ‘mother’ (I mean outside her role functions: the ‘mother’ accepting a domain that is the margin or the harem. as non-name and as source of goods.) There is always listen to a woman speak at a public gathering (if she within her at least a little of that good mother’s milk. She hasn’t painfully lost her wind). She doesn’t ‘speak’, she writes in white ink. throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it’s with her body that she vitally supports the ‘logic’ of her speech. Her flesh speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she physically materialises what she’s thinking; she signifies it with her body. In a certain way she inscribes what she’s saying, because she doesn’t deny her drives the intractable and impassioned part they have in speaking. Her speech, even when ‘theoretical’ or political, is never simple or 66 67 Excerpt from Hélène Cixous, ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ in Signs, I (4), trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, 1976; reprinted in New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, University of Mas- sachusetts Press, MA, 1981. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk show / Johnson & Chung & Maeda

B.S. JOHNSON A selectional restriction involving As a teacher, he would point out I’d like to use pronoun choice Proposition: to children that if they chose to Yuck foo move into other social contexts That These Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda South Hanoi Institute of Technology then they would probably not find acceptance unless they conformed Children’s to the speech conventions of the Speech is Bad. this space to write a few words about the background research in- This note is concerned with a counterexample to the new one, accent being generally volved in making our show at Isabella Bortolozzi gallery in 2006, and outrageous claim made by the bourgeois imperialist the easiest way of determining For the Proposition: to explain what I call the mechanics of the piece: how it was supposed linguist McCawley that “there is no verb in English class origin: but he would never Miss Crossthwaite. to function in that particular context. Since the piece was about the which allows for its subject just those noun phrases attempt to “correct” children’s relation of the supporting texts that describe artworks to the artworks which may pronominalize to SHE, namely noun phrases speech provided they were mak- Against the Proposition: themselves—in other words, how much meaning could be applied to denoting women, ships, and countries... selectional ing themselves clear to him; that Mr Albert. the work from the outside, the idea of a reference established by a restrictions are definable solely in terms of proper- is, provided they did not speak supporting text, or the text’s role in a claim to legitimate discourse— ties of semantic representation. Consider the idiom- indistinctly. Miss Crossthwaite said that they we withheld any information outside of the gallery press release, which atic sense of “shove X up Y’s ass”. As is well known, all knew the speech of children we considered to be an important part of the work. Y must be the coreferentail to the indirect object of Miss Crossthwaite was never- at this school to be bad: every it was less a technique or theory than the sensibility of a group a deleted performative verb): theless convinced that she would time one of them opened his or of people that inspired our work. This sensibility, at once critical and (1) Shove it up your/*my ass still object when any child said her mouth to speak the result was irreverent, was found in papers associated with a linguistic theory “ain’t” in her hearing. almost invariably hideous, an called generative semantics. Generative semantics is almost always (2) He told me to shove it up my/*your ass. offence to the ears. Their speech talked about in the past tense, sometimes even nostalgically, because For certain speakers, X may not be a ‘full’ noun Mr Albert said that while in was slovenly, like their personal many consider it to be a failed research program, obsolete or un- phrase in surface structure: his childhood “ain’t” was com- habits. employable in present-day linguistic studies. I would say generative (3) Shove your foreign policy up your ass, you mon, this usage had now shifted semantics hasn’t been so much discredited as absorbed into a field that Yankee imperialist. to “ent” in London. This was an Mr Albert said that “bad”, has been completely rearranged or restructured, partly because of its example of the continual progres- “hideous” and “slovenly”, were own impact on that field. but all speakers appear to allow X to be an anaphoric sion of sound changes in speech, not words that could be meaning- The people who proposed the generative semantics model saw it pronoun: in the face of which any stan- fully used about speech: a child as an improvement to transformational grammar; they were one-time (4) Take your foreign policy and shove it up your dardisation was quite wasted, even saying prize for praise was using disciples turned dissidents. One can safely say that the proponents of ass, you Yankee imperialist. ludicrous. And the working-class the same sound as in the word generative semantics were very much aware of their role as separatists, The pronoun may be IT but may not be HE or SHE: always led in such speech changes, prize. The sound itself was not or at least of their oppositional position to the dominant mainstream (5) Nixon, you imperialist butcher, take your luna- and the upper classes were farthest “wrong”, therefore, but its context of Chomsky’s theory, a role which jibed well with the time in which tic Secretary of Defense and shove him up your ass. behind: the Queen, for instance, was not that of so-called standard they developed their ideas, The Sixties. As an oppositional theory it always lanches a ship, and uses speech: accurately, it was only in took all the trappings of the counterculture of the period, embracing (6) Nixon, you imperialist butcher, take your lorst for lost. a social context that sounds could and employing a timely rhetoric, style and strategy that delighted in brainless daughter and shover her up your ass. be described as misplaced. Often the madcap, especially sex, drugs, the Rolling Stones, protesting the (7) Rockefeller, you robber baron, take your Miss Crossthwaite said that the different sound produced war in Vietnam, scatology, and profanity. They circulated their ideas in 80-foot yacht and shove it/her up your ass. the speech of the children of this by these children required more underground papers, mimeographed them and passed them around. school was bad and slovenly. phonic effort to produce (for Certain informants have reported that they find THEM example, the glottal stop) than acceptable but only when its antecedent is something The bell went before a vote could be the one it replaced: how then ******** whose singular would pronominalize to it rather than taken. could such speech be described to HE or SHE: as “slovenly”? The offence to (8) Nixon, you imperialist butcher, take your Excerpt from B.S. Johnson, ‘Albert Angelo’ Miss Crossthwaite’s lovely ears, bourgeois lackeys in Taiwan and shove them up in B.S. Johnson Omnibus, Picador, 2004. your ass. Permission to use material from ‘Albert Mr Albert suggested, came about Angelo’ has been kindly granted by the because these children were not (9) Nixon, you oppressor of the masses, take your Estate of B.S. Johnson. speaking as she spoke herself; anti-crime bills and shove them up your ass. these children were not imposing the same pattern on their words 68 69 as she imposed on hers: for who approves, Mr Albert quoted from Petronius without attribution, of conduct unlike his own? For communication within their own social context, the speech of these children was perfectly suited. Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / Virno

4.4. The speaker as performing artist

paul Virno

Each one of us is, and has always been, a virtuoso, a performing art- ist, at times mediocre or awkward, but, in any event, a virtuoso. In fact, the fundamental model of virtuosity, the experience which is the base of the concept, is the activity of the speaker. This is not the activity of a knowledgeable and erudite locutor, but of any locutor. Human verbal language, not being a pure tool or a complex of instrumental signals (these are characteristics which are inher- ent, if anything, in the languages of non-human animals: one need only think of bees and of the sig- nals which they use for coordinat- ing the procurement of food), has its fulfillment in itself and does not produce (at least not as a rule, not necessarily) an “object” inde- pendent of the very act of having been uttered. language is “without end product.” Every utterance is a vir- tuosic performance. And this is so, also because, obviously, utterance is connected (directly or indi- rectly) to the presence of others. Language presupposes and, at the same time, institutes once again the “publicly organized space” which Arendt speaks about. One would need to reread the passages from the Nicomachean Ethics on the essential difference between poiesis (production) and praxis (politics) with very close con- nection to the notion of parole in Saussure (Saussure, Course) and, above all, to the analyses of Emile Benveniste (Benveniste, Prob- lems) on the subject of utterance (where “utterance” is not under- stood to mean the content of what is uttered, that “which is said,” but the interjection of a word as such,

70 71 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 talk show / Virno the very fact of speaking). In this way one would establish that the differential characteristics of prax- is with respect to poiesis coincide absolutely with the differential characteristics of verbal language with respect to motility or even to non-verbal communication. There is more to the story. The speaker alone unlike the pianist, the dancer or the actor can do without a script or a score. The speaker’s virtuosity is twofold: not only does it not produce an end product which is distinguishable from performance, but it does not even leave behind an end prod- uct which could be actualized by means of performance. In fact, the act of parole makes use only of the potentiality of language, or better yet, of the generic faculty of language: not of a pre-estab- lished text in detail. The virtuosity of the speaker is the prototype and apex of all other forms of virtuos- ity, precisely because it includes within itself the potential/act relationship, whereas ordinary or derivative virtuosity, instead, pre- supposes a determined act (as in Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations, let us say), which can be relived over and over again. But I will return to this point later.

Excerpt from Paul Virno, ‘A Grammar of the Multitude For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life,’ in Semiotext(e), Columbia University, New York, 2004.

72 73 Roland / issue 1 / May 2009 Talk Show / Matsui & Colophon

0223~0227 Colophon

shigeru matsui

Published on the occasion of any means mechanical, ICA Patrons: Joan and Robin III I III III I II II I II I I II I III II II III III II I photocopying or otherwise, Alvarez, Ayling & Conroy, II III II II III I I III I III III I III II I I II II I III Curated by Will Holder with without prior permission in Charles Asprey, Robert Beat, Richard Birkett and Jennifer writing from the publisher. Kathy Burnham, Dimitris I II I I II III III II III II II III II I III III I I III II Thatcher Daskalopoulos, Fred Dorfman, I I III III II II II III I III III I III II I II I II II I Copyright the artists, authors and Denise Esfandi, Jules and Barbara Institute of Contemporary Arts ICA, London, 2009 Farber, Sam Hainsworth, Marc III III II II I I I II III II II III II I III I III I I III 6 May—31 May 2009 and Kristen Holtzman, David II II I I III III III I II I I II I III II III II III III II All images courtesy the artists, Kotler, Martha Mehta, Monica is an ICA exhibition and as listed hereafter. Mark O’Neil, Maureen Paley, Nicola III II I II II I I III I I II III III II III II I I II III produced with support from Wilsher p. 6: Julian Hughes. Plant, John Scott, Rumi Verjee, II I III I I III III II III III I II II I II I III III I II London Consortium Robert Ashley p. 10: Stephanie Jay Verjee, Andrew Warren, Berger. Robert Mapplethorpe Alison Wiltshire. I III II III III II II I II II III I I III I III II II III I Additional support from: p. 11: Robert Mapplethorpe I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II The French Embassy, Foundation. Sharon Hayes p. 13: Institute of Contemporary Arts Lightweight Media, Kirin Ichiban, Andrea Geyer. Reading Room The Mall III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I Veuve Clicquot p. 16: Benedict Johnson. The London SW1Y 5AH II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III I II III Shout p. 16: Courtesy Park Circus. United Kingdom Editors: Richard Birkett, Pierre Bismuth p. 61: Courtesy the +44 20 7930 3647 II III II I II I I II I III III III I II II II III I I III Charlotte Bonham-Carter and Lisson Gallery, London and Jan www.ica.org.uk I II I III I III III I III II II II III I I I II III III II Will Holder Mot, Brussels. Artistic Director: Ekow Eshun III I III II III II II III II I I I II III III III I II II I Copy editor: Melissa Larner All texts copyright ICA and Director of Exhibitions: III I III I III II III II II I II I I III II II II I I III the authors, unless otherwise Mark Sladen Designers: Sarah Boris assisted by indicated. Director of Learning: II III II III II I II I I III I III III II I I I III III II Frederic Tacer Emma-Jayne Taylor I II I II I III I III III II III II II I III III III II II I The ICA and Will Holder would Head of Press: Natasha Plowright The design of Roland has been like to thank all of the artists and Gallery Manager: Trevor Hall II II I I II II I III III I II II I III III II III I III I adapted from a template originally their representatives for their Assistant Curators: Richard I I III III I I III II II III I I III II II I II III II III created by Will Stuart, and which help in the preparation of this Birkett, Charlotte Bonham-Carter has since migrated into a number project. In addition, we would Exhibition Organiser: of different forms; and its name like to thank the following: Stuart Isla Leaver-Yap is taken from the artist Roland Bailey, Ricardo Basbaum, BFI, Press Officer: Zoë Franklin Penrose, one of the founders of Will Bradley, Amy Busfield, Gallery Assistant: Kenji Takahashi the ICA. Steven Connor, Ann Demeester, Editions Manager: Vicky Steer Kodwo Eshun, Will Fowler, Tessa Printer: Principal Colour Giblin, Project Arts Centre, Mimi Johnson, Kaisa Lassinaro, Publisher: ICA, London Tanya Leighton, Linnet Magner, Christian Mooney, Emily Pethick, All rights reserved. No part of this David Reinfurt, Mike Sperlinger, publication may be reproduced, Gertrude Stein, Christopher Stone 74 stored in a retrieval system or and Alex Waterman. transmitted, in any form or by

Front cover image: Roland Penrose at the ICA in 1960 Back cover text: Claire Gilman, ‘Pistoletto’s Staged Subjects’, in October 124, Spring 2008 That the individual is always This is also the basic premise limited by inherited codes of Eco’s groundbreaking 1962 and postures is not something text The Opera Aperta (The to lament, but instead some- Open Work), a book Ameri- thing to acknowledge and A SEASON OF SPEECH- can scholars have erroneously accept, since it is through BASED ARTWORKS cited when analyzing the shift received behavior that com- AND EVENTS from form and representation munication is possible. to process and behavior. Talk show Talk show Talk show

In fact, The Open Work warns against interpreting openness as “indefinite suggestion and stimulation of emotional re- sponse.” […] an open work allows for interpretive dissem- ination precisely because it curated byWill Holder admits artifice, offering its withRichardBirkett terms and conditions as “tropes” or “role[s] to fulfill.” andJenniferThatcher Talk show

Instead of trapping the viewer It is, Eco writes, quoting Mer- in an intuitive, sensory experi- leau-Ponty, the product of a ence, the work of art presents new kind of humanism in itself as a construct that which the individual “‘instal- invites different uses and reac- led in his fragile body, in a tions depending on the author language that has already done or viewer’s particular circum- so much speaking, and in an stances. In this way, the open unstable history – gathers him- work permits multiple, albeit ICA, THE MALL, LONDON self together and begins to see, limited, interpretations. MAY 6th–31st, 2009 to understand, and to signify.’” Talk show Talk show Talk show

Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1 Y5AH www.ica.org.uk/talkshow