Lee Campbell : Radical Ventriloquism

13 Mar-19 Apr 2020

Overview

We are caught, caught in a stream of floating heads: provocative faces preaching divisive politics and spewing universalist values as well as those who meme these voices through a satiric vernacular. One of our fundamental human rights is freedom of speech, the freedom to express ourselves in our own subjective manner. But in a spectacularly tense age, where the complexities of speaking are bound up with far wider socio-cultural politics the question as to how to represent a voice, to articulate a humanity and indeed an identity are constantly being redrawn, attacked, and marred. Is speaking for someone/thing or group always a provocative gesture, limiting their own humanity/identity? What if we redressed the terms of engagement? What if we spoke through, and communicated via wholly non-human or in-human means? What then?