TALK SHOW - press release

Talk Show

Institute of Contemporary Arts
6 May – 31 May 2009
The ICA has long been a site for heated exchange through conversation, oration and performative speech, but never before has the speech act been made the main focus of the institution. Through a varied programme that activates the ICA spaces both during the daytime and through evening events, Talk Show addresses speech as a tool and as a medium to produce and negotiate meaning, both within the field of art and across other areas of life such as politics, religion and entertainment.
Talk Show is a month-long season featuring artworks and live events, including an exhibition of speech in the ICA’s galleries, as well as a broad range of events in the institute’s theatre and other spaces. The participants include over thirty international artists, as well as thirty speakers from diverse disciplines who place the speech act at the centre of their practice: including speech therapists, musicians, anthropologists, politicians and philosophers. This chorus will address the primacy of the spoken word, in all its forms, in our social and cultural landscape.
Many artists are currently employing speech as a medium, and the ICA’s galleries will contain a range of interventions: including scripted artworks performed at regular intervals; pre-recorded audio pieces; and video works that emphasise the spoken word. Artists also use speech in the formation and negotiation of their ideas, and the generative nature of speech will be represented by a series of artist residencies, in which participants will use the ICA’s spaces and resources to create new works through public dialogues.
In addition to these events in the galleries, the ICA’s theatre will also play host to a large number of events, including workshops that investigate the utilisation of the voice. The ICA’s new education studio will be another resource, linked with organisations that specialise in the collation, archiving and distribution of audio art and the spoken word. The latter project will be a partnership with ARTonAIR.org, an innovative internet radio station based in New York that will record and transmit Talk Show events.
Talk Show is being curated by Will Holder (artist, writer, designer and editor whose projects include the journal F.R David), Richard Birkett (Assistant Curator, ICA), and Jennifer Thatcher (Director of Talks, ICA).