Speak // Listen
Speak// Listen is a collaborative artwork created by Sara Kerr, Danielle Genzel, Jesse Kauppila and Jessica Hubbard.
In the present political climate we have lost the ability to have real dialogue. Conversation is about reciprocity: speaking and listening. Right now rhetoric abounds unchecked in terms of veracity and we end up inundated with noise: information without a context, words without the necessary framework needed to make them meaningful. In response to this situation, and to reflect upon it, we created a piece that physically divides the act of speaking from the act of listening.
On one side of a wall, viewers SPEAK. They are presented with a microphone and the chance to record themselves. They are are offered a series of questions ranging from existential to mundane: What’s in your pocket right now? Are regrets useful? Tell me a secret in a language that you have made up... On the other side of the wall, viewers LISTEN. Through headphones they hear a random selection of other people’s voices. The listener does not know who is speaking, what question the person was responding to, or any other information about the words that they are hearing.
The first iteration of this piece was presented at ALTERSPACE, SF as part of the MIND CONTROL exhibition (Jan 2017).