“Speak up, child!” – Voicing The Void Between Subjectivity And Subjection
Danica Dakić, May Adadol Ingawanij, Luis Jacob, Ruth Noack, NATASCHA NOACK, Imogen Stidworthy

“Speak up, child!” – Voicing The Void Between Subjectivity And Subjection
Curated and presented by Ruth Noack

With contributions by May Adadol Ingawanij, Lina Campanella, Danica Dakić, Dominique Hurt, Luis Jacob, Yunjoo Kwak, Natascha Noack, Ruth Noack, Imogen Stidworthy and Simon Wachsmuth.

SUMMARY
Focused on children’s speech, this day of listening and responding to the voices inhabiting an in-between space generated by language will begin with Danica Dakić’s video projection Emily (2010), in which image and sound encounter each other in an uncanny alliance. Emily seems to be a willing subject in her own subjection to language, possibly because her command of language gives her a voice in the first place, thus granting her access to subjecthood.

INTRODUCTION
In Danica Dakić’s video projection Emily (2010), image and sound encounter each other in an uncanny alliance: we see a girl learning to sign. We hear her teacher’s voice giving instruction. Emily seems to be a willing subject in her own subjection to language, possibly because her command of language gives her a voice in the first place, thus granting her access to subjecthood. At least this is what the philosopher Louis Althusser teaches us: subjectivity and subjection are intertwined. Yet Dakić’s lesson is another one, for she places the viewer between teacher and pupil, thus provoking us to ask ourselves how we are listening. If we listen closely, can we discern a space between? And what kind of subversion or creativity appears there?

PROGRAM & PARTICIPANTS:

12.15 – 19.00
The day will begin with Danica Dakić’s video projection Emily (2010), followed by Emily: or, On Education, a reading by Ruth Noack, interpreted by Lina Campanella.

Luis Jacob will perform A Life Full of Holes is Still Worth Living, a slide lecture that uses the work of two photographers of children in the streets – Helen Levitt and Ann Golzen – as reference points.

May Adadol Ingawanij has prepared a new video essay that draws upon her research into voice performance within a mode of live cinema prevalent in Thailand during the Cold War era.

Imogen Stidworthy will discuss her artistic practice, one which has been preoccupied with the voice as material. Far from being a formalist, she asks how we experience and conceive of a space where words are unstable, run out, or fail, and what other forms of understanding might emerge in the face of unreadability. Is this unreadability the void opened up by cultural difference, or even the difference between children and adults?

Further revealing the gap between culturally defined speech practices and offering a possibility to bridge it, Natascha Noack will present and discuss a live voiceover of the Swedish Children’s Film Elina in Spaces in Speech.

Throughout the program of the day Yunjoo Kwak, Simon Wachsmuth and Dominique Hurth will accompany the proceedings as audience advocates.

PARTICIPANTS:

RUTH NOACK
Ruth Noack is an author, art critic and exhibition maker who trained as a visual artist and art historian. Noack was curator of documenta 12, 2007; The Government, Witte de With, Rotterdam; Secession, Vienna, 2005 and Not Dressed for Conquering – Ines Doujak’s Loomshuttles/Warpaths, RCA, London 2012. Noack headed the Curating Contemporary Art programme at the RCA, London and was Research Leader for MeLa – European Museums in an age of migrations (2012 – 13). She recently published Sanja Ivekovic: Triangle, Afterall Books and Agency, Ambivalence, Analysis. Approaching the Museum with Migration in Mind, Politecnico di Milano, 2013.

DANICA DAKIĆ
Danica Dakić (1962, Sarajevo) works with video, film, photography and installation. A professor at the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, she studied in Sarajevo, Belgrade and Düsseldorf and lives in Düsseldorf, Weimar and Sarajevo. She has exhibited internationally, including in the group exhibitions documenta 12 (2007), the Istanbul Biennial (2003, 2009), the Biennale of Sydney (2010), the Liverpool Biennial (2010) and the Kiev Biennale (2012).

LINA CAMPANELLA
Lina Campanella was born in Stuttgart in 2000. Since 2004 she has lived in Rotterdam with her Dutch-Brazilian family, and is currently a second year pupil at a local gymnasium. Due to her family situation she speaks Dutch, Portuguese, German and English. Since 2008 she has been in training as a member of the National Youth Choir, with which she has sung in public concerts including Mahler’s 8th symphony in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam with guest conductor Maris Jansons in 2011 and Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honneger in Vredenburg, Utrecht (2014).

LUIS JACOB
Luis Jacob was born in Lima and lives in Toronto. An artist, curator and writer, his practice addresses social interaction and the subjectivity of aesthetic experience. His recent solo and group exhibitions include Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf, Birch Libralato, Toronto (2012); the Taipei Biennial 2012, Taipei Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan and Witte de With Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2012) and Documenta 12, Kassel (2007).

MAY ADADOL INGAWANJI
May Adadol Ingawanij is a film researcher and programmer specialising in Thai cinema history and contemporary experimental and artists’ moving image in Southeast Asia. In 2012 she directed the 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival. May is based at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster. She is a regular contributor to the Thai-language Aan (Read) Journal.

IMOGEN STIDWORTHY
Imogen Stidworthy (1963, London) works primarily with the voice and language, and reflects upon how we are positioned and how we locate ourselves, physically and culturally, through the voice. Her recent exhibitions and solo shows include the Bergen Triennale (2013); The Collection as a Character, MuKHA, Antwerp, Volumes of Stone, Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna, and Sacha, AKINCI, Amsterdam (2013). Stidworthy curated In the First Circle (with Paul Domela), Fundació Antoni Tapiès, Barcelona (2011 – 12), and Die Lucky Bush, MuKHA, Antwerp (2008).

NATASCHA NOACK
Natascha Noack works at the intersections of language, film, music and movement. As a dancer and choreographer she performs and teaches contemporary African dance at Tanzfabrik Berlin and holds workshops throughout Europe. She translates films and film theory, appears as a voice-over artist and presenter at various film festivals and is a member of the selection committee of Generation, a section of the International Film Festival Berlin directed at a young audience.

YUNJOO KWAK
Yunjoo Kwak (1977, Seoul) lives and works in Amsterdam and Seoul. She studied and taught at the Korean National University of Art, Seoul, 2008 and the Dutch Art Institute/ArtEZ, Arnhem, 2011. Her work deals with the notion of “performativity” as a political and aesthetic strategy in film, lecture performance, text and publication. She has been exhibited in a number of different public venues including the French Cultural Centre, Reykjavik Museum of Photography and the Seoul Museum of Art.

DOMINIQUE HURTH
Dominique Hurth is a visual artist based in Berlin. She graduated from Saint Martin’s School of Art, London and the école nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 2010 – 11 she was awarded a research and production bursary at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and in 2013 a Fellowship in Visual Art at Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck, and was resident at Triangle France and Can Xalant in 2010 and 2011. In 2014 / 15 she is the recipient of the Berliner Senate Grant at ISCP, New York. Recent and current projects include group shows at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Fundacio Tapies, Barcelona; Villa Oppenheim – Museum Charlottenburg, Berlin; Tiroler Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck; LOOK 13 – Liverpool International Photography Festival; MAMO – Cité Radieuse, Marseille; Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen; solo shows at Souterrain Sammlung Hoffmann and clockwork gallery Berlin; Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen, Innsbruck; a commissioned work on the Ku’Damm, Berlin, and a series of readings in Marseille, Rotterdam, Innsbruck, Paris and Berlin. Her first book language in the darkness of the world through inverse images was published in 2012. Since 2014, she is professor in sculpture and installation at Bergen Academy of Art and Design.

Social-Fabric20210105-2869-zp00xl.pdf