His Master Voice
23 Mar - 28 Jul 2013
HIS MASTER'S VOICE: On Voice and Language
Curated by Inke Arns
23 March - 28 July 2013
We are acting through language – but how does language act through us? The exhibition HIS MASTER'S VOICE: On Voice and Language addresses the uncanny, irritating or comical moments produced by the human voice and language. This selection of performances, videos and web projects lets spectators experience the emotional, social and political potential of the voice. How is the voice connected to the body and identity of the individual? What happens when the spoken word detaches itself from the speaker, the text from its meaning, the sound from the image? What if the voice no longer belongs to the body from which it emanates? The artists in this exhibition listen to ventriloquists and voice-over artists as well as propagandists and preachers. They explore and re-enact historic and contemporary speech acts, probing the emotional and spiritual effect of the vocal power and word games, and playing with shifts of meaning and identity. While doing so, they also experiment with the various media used to record, reproduce or silence the voice.
HIS MASTER'S VOICE: On Voice and Language is an exhibition on the performativity of voice and language, the inauthenticity and uncanniness of speaking, voice as a political speech act, and language as performative utterance. The exhibition will examine the ‘urge to speak in contemporary art’ (Sabine Maria Schmidt). Artists are increasingly interested in speech acts and the corporeality and performativity of the human voice, tackling a broad range of issues from the analysis of the voice as an indicator of presence and identity to examinations of historic and contemporary political rhetoric, including such extreme forms as hate speech.
Additional materials (like books, film extracts, videos, quotations, etc.) addressing and commenting upon the notion of the performativity of the voice, speech and language will be shown alongside with the artworks in the exhibition. These additional materials will be shown in six display cabinets.
Curated by Inke Arns
23 March - 28 July 2013
We are acting through language – but how does language act through us? The exhibition HIS MASTER'S VOICE: On Voice and Language addresses the uncanny, irritating or comical moments produced by the human voice and language. This selection of performances, videos and web projects lets spectators experience the emotional, social and political potential of the voice. How is the voice connected to the body and identity of the individual? What happens when the spoken word detaches itself from the speaker, the text from its meaning, the sound from the image? What if the voice no longer belongs to the body from which it emanates? The artists in this exhibition listen to ventriloquists and voice-over artists as well as propagandists and preachers. They explore and re-enact historic and contemporary speech acts, probing the emotional and spiritual effect of the vocal power and word games, and playing with shifts of meaning and identity. While doing so, they also experiment with the various media used to record, reproduce or silence the voice.
HIS MASTER'S VOICE: On Voice and Language is an exhibition on the performativity of voice and language, the inauthenticity and uncanniness of speaking, voice as a political speech act, and language as performative utterance. The exhibition will examine the ‘urge to speak in contemporary art’ (Sabine Maria Schmidt). Artists are increasingly interested in speech acts and the corporeality and performativity of the human voice, tackling a broad range of issues from the analysis of the voice as an indicator of presence and identity to examinations of historic and contemporary political rhetoric, including such extreme forms as hate speech.
Additional materials (like books, film extracts, videos, quotations, etc.) addressing and commenting upon the notion of the performativity of the voice, speech and language will be shown alongside with the artworks in the exhibition. These additional materials will be shown in six display cabinets.