www.ica.org.uk/education

Talk Show5— 31 May 2009

Written by:

Nathalie Boobis & Jessica Rayner

2 3

Our dynamic, artist-led Education Programme

provides opportunities for schools, families and

community groups to engage in creative ways with

the ICA’s exhibitions. The gallery is open for school

visits between 10am and 12pm, Monday – Friday.

This pack is geared towards secondary school

students pursuing Key Stages 3, 4 and 5. Teachers

may find it useful to visit the exhibitions before

bringing a group. If you would like to plan a trip to

the ICA, get in touch and find out how we can meet

the needs of your group.

Contact Emma-Jayne Taylor, Director of Learning:

phone: +44 (0)20 7766 1423

email: emma-jayne.taylor@ica.org.uk

For more information and to view our archive

of previous learning activities, please visit:

www.ica.org.uk/education

ICA Education Programme:

What We Do:Artist Led Projects: Our programme includes

artist-led workshops with schools and innovative

collaborations between artists and community groups.

Teachers Packs: These are available with each

exhibition and include exhibition notes, suggested

discussion points and activities for your visit, how to

prepare before attending the exhibition and proposed

activities for the classroom.

Insets: The ICA offers professional development

sessions for teachers as an opportunity to meet with

artists and gallery staff, and discuss how best to

incorporate contemporary art into young people’s

education.

Schools Mailing List: Keep up to date with the

exciting education projects, events and workshops

happening at the ICA by signing up for our mailing list.

Teachers Previews: These private views are

dedicated to education resources and offer ideas for

your pupils’ visit to the ICA. Come as a teacher or as

yourself to enjoy a relaxing evening in the gallery.

4 5

Exhibition Concept:Talk Show is a month-long season of artworks and live events addressing that central feature of human life — the act of speech.

The programme, most of which is free, will activate the ICA during both daytime

and evening, and is being presented in the institute’s Galleries, Theatre and other

spaces. It features over a hundred participants, including artists, performers and

others whose activities centre on speech and vocal performance, such as linguists,

speech therapists and voiceover artists. This chorus will address the primacy of

the spoken word in our social and cultural landscape, and its use as a tool to

produce and negotiate meaning in art, life and politics.

Many contemporary artists employ the voice as a medium, and Talk Show

includes an exhibition of speech-based works in the Lower Gallery and other

spaces. Meanwhile, the Upper Gallery is being used as a location for a series of

artists’ residencies, events that are open to the public and in which participants

will research, rehearse and produce new work. The Lower Gallery and Theatre

will also host performances and presentations by artists, musicians and others, a

programme that promises an array of extraordinary experiences. Further events

include workshops for training the voice, discussions on different aspects of

language, and a conference that will call on the newest thinking in the science and

sociology of speech.

Talk Show is an experiment in inter-disciplinary programming, and has been

curated by the artist, writer and designer Will Holder, working together with

Richard Birkett and Jennifer Thatcher of the ICA, and with the help and

support of The London Consortium (a multi-disciplinary graduate programme in

humanities and cultural studies). A wide range of resources are linked to the

season, including a magazine containing a variety of new and reprinted texts.

Many of the events will be streamed on the ICA website, as well as by other

broadcasters. Finally, the ICA’s new Reading Room is presenting a number of

archives of spoken word recordings, allowing visitors to pursue their own research. Diagram [love songs], 1994, from Diagrams, Ricardo Basbaum

6 7

ExhibitionThe Talk Show exhibition is staged across a number of spaces and platforms, and

operates around and amongst the events and residencies that occur throughout

the month. It features artworks that investigate the expression of language through

the sound of the voice, or in some cases through its absence. In the Lower Gallery

and Concourse there are works by Pierre Bismuth, Ryan Gander, Beatrice Gibson

with Jamie McCarthy, Adam Pendleton, Falke Pisano, Seth Price, Manuel Saiz

and Frances Stark; the Reading Room includes a work by Mark Wilsher; while

the Upper Gallery will feature, in turn, works by Robert Ashley and Robert Filliou.

Residenciescastillo/corrales, Melanie Gilligan, Fia Backström, Stella Capes and Plus Minus

Ensemble are all in residence at the ICA during May, developing projects in

which production is publicly framed, and in which discussion, presentation and

scripting become part of the production process. Within the varying approaches

of these artists there is a sense of an imminent product, and of the transposition

of knowledge and language into object.

Performances & PresentationsThe Talk Show programme features a wide range of performances and presenta-

tions. Those originated by Robert Ashley, Chris Mann, Ann-James Chaton and

Andy Moor, Alex Waterman and Joan La Barbara exemplify a mode of vocal

experimentation with links to Dada and Fluxus. Performed speech as physical

form, and as politicised gesture, is explored further in events by Jeremiah Day

and Simone Forti, Sharon Hayes, Jimmy Robert and Ian White, Dexter Sinister

and Stephen Sutcliffe. Talk Show also addresses the relationship between the aural

and the audience, within events organised by Terry Smith and School of Sound.

Workshops & DiscussionsThe Talk Show programme features workshops on public speaking, political

chants and the social nuances of speech choices, as well as discussions on sign

language and the notion of doublespeak. These events draw on sociological and

neurological research, as well as personal testimony, and explore how and why

our voices can obtain weight as personal or public tools. Excerpt from Malcolm Goldstein, Illuminations from Fantastic Gardens, 1974 (for vocal ensemble)

8 9

Themes

Words in Art

Speech and Production

Themes

Speaking and Listening

Use Your Voice!

Suggested Activity

Using your current fictional text from your English

class, pick a page and randomly choose fifteen words.

With these words construct a poem. The poem does

not have to make sense. Create a visual piece about

the poem, using the words within the art work.

Work in pairs. Each choosing a piece of art (this can

be from a current exhibition or one you know in

particular). Write about the characteristics of the

piece (do not mention the artist or the title) then

swap over what you have written and each make a

piece in response to the piece of writing. You can use

any medium.

Suggested Activity

Using a sound recording device, choose a word and

repeat it over and over for 3 minutes. Play with the

speed and volume of the recording device. Do you

think the meaning of the word is altered when it is

repeated? Try doing this activity as a performance,

without using a device, just by repeating a word and

playing with speed and volume.

Dubbing: Work in pairs. Think of a subject you have

both been studying in one of your lessons. Choose a

5 minute scene from a film involving two characters.

Turn the sound off for the duration of the scene and

speak over the parts of each of the characters into a

recording device, creating your own spontaneous

script based on the chosen subject matter but trying

to match up your words in time with theirs. Play both

film and sound recording together.

Themes and Activities: Key Stage 3

10 11

Themes

Words in Art

Speech and Production

Themes

Speaking and Listening

Use Your Voice!

Suggested Activity

Working in pairs, sit back to back with a sketch book

or paper drawing board each. The person who starts

must draw a picture whilst describing the picture to

their partner so they can draw it too. On each part of

the drawing, both students should write the

instruction; e.g. if person 1 says ‘draw a road’, both

students will draw a road and also write ‘draw a

road’. When finished, compare the drawings. Think

about how person 1’s instructions were interpreted

by person 2. Were they very different or similar?

Display the pictures side by side.

Sourcing ideas from your current course work brief,

document all your ideas, research and drawings/art

work that go towards finalising your ideas. Give

yourself a time scale to work towards (example

4weeks), when it comes to presenting your final

work, present all the documentation as well. The

documentation will be a piece of art in its own right.

Suggested Activity

Using onomatopoeic words to create a video art piece

with you acting out the meaning of the word. You can

be saying the word repeatedly. For example, the word

‘murmur’ think about how you would demonstrate the

meaning of the word, how you would say it, act it etc.

Dubbing: Work in pairs. Think of a subject matter

which you both know a lot about. Choose a 5 minute

scene from a foreign film involving two characters.

Turn the sound off for the duration of the scene and

speak over the parts of each of the characters into a

recording device, creating your own spontaneous

script based on the chosen subject matter but trying

to match up your words in time with theirs. Play

both film and sound recording together.

Karaoke: Work in pairs. Record a three minute

conversation (you can do this by hand), then choosing

a famous duet/song, sing the words from the

conversation in place of the lyrics. Think about how

the meaning of both song and what was written are

changed and how they work in relation to each other.

Themes and Activities: Key Stage 4

12 13

Themes

Words in Art

Speech and Production

Themes

Speaking and Listening

Use Your Voice!

Suggested Activity

Sourcing ideas from you current course-work, write

on an A4 side of paper about a piece of work you are

planning to make. Discuss how it would be made and

in great detail what the finished piece will look like.

Mount or frame the piece of writing and hang it on

the wall.

Using your current coursework and a partner, start

to talk about all your ideas relating to your work to

your partner. Document all of your conversations

and, when the work is finished, try and map out what

elements of your ideas and work developed through

your documented conversations. Include the map

and the conversations in your final documentation

Suggested Activity

Create a video art piece: think of a noun, a verb and

an adjective word and film yourself repeating them

one after the other, for example, apple apple apple

apple apple, fast fast fast… until you can no longer say

them succinctly. Whilst repeating the words out load,

act out the meaning of the words (you may use props).

Dubbing: Choose a political figure from any time

period. Find footage of that person. Turn the sound

off for the duration of the scene and speak over that

the parts substituting their words for own. Think

about what you would like to say if you where in their

position; would your speech have a different angle?

Speak into a recording device, trying to match up

your words in time with theirs. Play both film and

sound recording together.

Karaoke: Looking at the artists involved with Talk

Show, find a review/ statement written about/ by the

artist. Choosing a famous song, sing the words from

the statement in place of the lyrics. Think about how

the meaning of both song and statement are changed

and how they work in relation to each other.

Themes and Activities: Key Stage 5

14 15

1. Exhibition: Words in Art

Conceptual art is a term that came into use in the late 1960s. Conceptual artists

emphasized concepts, or ideas, over visual form; questioning what defined a work

of art. Language played a central role in this with artists such as Joseph Kosuth,

Sol Le Witt and John Baldessari exploring and questioning long-held

assumptions about what defined a work of art. In emphasizing ideas over visual

forms, they gave language a central role in their work.

Access to portable video equipment really opened up the possibilities for artists

working in the late 60s. They were able to record performances and experiment

with sound, language and rhythms of text. Further advancements in audio-visual

technology contributed to the development of the video and audio installation as

an art-form which helped to bring speech and the voice into a gallery setting.

QUESTIONS:• Do you think a conceptual art piece should look good?

• Look at the picture of Marcel Duchamp’s piece, ‘Fountain’. What makes this

urinal a work of art and others just a urinal? Think about ‘readymades’

and the role of the idea or concept behind a work of art.

FACTS AND FIGURES:This term came into use in the late 1960s to describe a wide range of types of art

that no longer took the form of a conventional art object. In 1973 a pioneering

record of the early years of the movement appeared in the form of a book, Six

Years, by the American critic Lucy Lippard. The ‘six years’ were 1966–72. The

long subtitle of the book referred to ‘so-called conceptual or information or idea

art’.Conceptual artists do not set out to make a painting or a sculpture and then

fit their ideas to that existing form. Instead they think beyond the limits of those

traditional media, and then work out their concept or idea in whatever

materials and whatever form is appropriate.

KEYWORDS:Concept / Idea / Readymade / Form / Medium / Skill / Workmanship / The White Cube / Installation / Text / Language

USEFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES:• http://www.altx.com/vizarts/conceptual.html

(Sentences on Conceptual Art by Sol Lewitt)

• http://www.baldessari.org/ (John Baldessari’s website)

• http://www.e-flux.com/projects/do_it/manuals/0_manual.html (Joseph Kosuth’s work, ‘One and Three Chairs’, 1965)

• http://www.ubuweb.com

(for a wealth of essays, videos, texts and audio works)

• http://www.luxonline.org.uk

(great educational resource on British film & video art)

Fountain, signed ‘R. Mutt 1917’, by Marcel Duchamp

16 17

2. Residencies: Speech & Production

Speech is a vehicle that drives the production, sharing and negotiation of

knowledge. Every art work in existence is surrounded by words: Before an art

work is even conceived, the artist would have talked or written around the idea of

it. Thoughts, conversations and writings would have crystallized the idea; words

would have described how it was to be made, or shown. Conversations would

have taken place with gallery owners, curators and technicians about its

installation. People would have come to see it and spoken, thought or written

about it. Therefore, speaking about something could almost be synonymous with

producing something.

QUESTIONS:• What role do conversations with your friends and teachers play in helping you

to realize your ideas?

• Do you think these conversations are important to your work?

FACTS AND FIGURES:Many artists throughout history have employed assistants to carry out their

instructions in the production of their work. Andy Warhol famously had his

Factory and nowadays, Damian Hirst does the same thing within his company,

Science Ltd, although many think that this is highly controversial however,

it is still the artists’ instructions that lead to the creation of the work.

KEYWORDS:Production / Speech / Conversations / Words / Thoughts / Process / Galleries / Curators / Factory / Assembly line / Assistants / Instructions

USEFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES:• http://www.ica.org.uk/19467.twl

(There is a wealth of material on the ICA website pertaining to the

Talk Show exhibition) Stella Capes, The Performance, 2007, Still from video

18 19

3. Performances & Presentations:

Speaking and Listening

When Dadaist Hugo Ball premiered his first abstract phonetic poem, ‘O Gadji

Beri Bimba’, in 1917, the audience fell about laughing. Wondering how he could

“remain serious” and in order to keep going above the laughter, he: “began to

chant [my] vowel sequences like a recitative, in liturgical style, and tried not only

to keep a straight face but to [compel myself to] be in earnest.” (Hugo Ball)

During the first public appearance of Dada in Paris, Tristan Tzara read out a

newspaper article to the accompaniment of clangings, tinklings and other noises.

On the 5th Febrauary, 1920, in the Salon des Independants, thirty-eight speakers

read Dada manifestos which were chanted like psalms.

The Dadaists were keen to break down formal language; they were keen that not

only the sounds were thought to be poetry but also the breaths. The human act of

speech was turned into performances that shook up the audience from being

passive observers into being actively part of what was going on.

QUESTIONS:• Contemplate your role as an audience in the following circumstances: listening

to a story told by someone familiar, being told off in the classroom, going to

the theatre, and hearing people preach in the street. How do you feel and

respond to these different situations?

• Imagine you’re the performer or speaker in the above situations.

What difference would the presence or lack of an audience make to you?

KEYWORDS:Speech / Language / Tone / Audience / Platform / Speaker / Volume / Performance / Voice / Information / Concept

USEFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES:• http://www.schoolofsound.co.uk/

• http://www.castillocorrales.fr/galerie/index.php/Currently

• http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/jimmy_robert_and_ian_white/

• http://www.dexter-sinister.com/

• http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

Sharon Hayes, Everything Else Has Failed! Don’t You this It’s Time for Love?, 2007

New York City Documentation of performance. Photo: Andrea Geyer

20 21

4. Workshops: Use Your Voice!

Your voice is an extremely powerful tool that extends beyond necessary

communication. Think about how politicians and public speakers use rhetoric to

convince you of what they are saying. As the Dadaists were exploring in their

performances of abstract poetry, your voice can be more than just the speaking of

words. Your voice is both the sounds you can make, from screams to laughter, to

gurgles and squeaks; and the way you express yourself. People that use sign

language to speak still have a ‘voice’, even though their communication is silent.

Eastern communication reads much more into body language and the silences

between words to understand what someone is saying. Think about what it

means to have a voice, and what it means if you don’t.

QUESTIONS:• Does someone’s voice (think about accent, tone, volume etc) make a difference

to how you perceive them? Why? Do you think this is right?

• Think about your teachers and how they speak to you in the classroom.

Do you imagine that they use the same voice outside school? Why?

Why do you think it’s important that people use different tones of voice for

different situations?

KEYWORDS:Abstraction / Participation / Activity / Voice / Communication / Sound / Culture / Collective / Temporary

USEFUL LINKS AND RESOURCES:• http://resonancefm.com/

• http://www.speakingcircles.com/

• http://www.stammering.org/adther_citylit.html

• http://www.myspace.com/jonnymichaelrobinson

Robert Ashley, Perfect Lives, 1984, still from video

22 23

Upcoming Events:Lower gaLLerygaLLeries, concourse

and reading roomdate in

may upper gaLLery theatre cinema 2

fri 8

fri 15

fri 22

fri 29

mon 11

mon 18

mon 25

wed 6

wed 13

wed 20

wed 27

sat 9

sat 16

sat 23

sat 30

tue 12

tue 19

tue 26

thu 7

thu 14

thu 21

thu 28

sun 10

sun 17

sun 24

sun 31

residency: castillo/corrales (6–17 may)

residency: melanie GilliGan (18–25 may)

residency:stella capes (24–26 may)

residency: fia Backström (25–31 may)

workshop: effective speaking in groups (3pm)

presentation: dexter sinister (7pm)

performance: plus minus ensemble (7pm)

residency: plus minus ensemBle (26–30 may)

performance: Joan La Barbara (4pm)

performance: robert ashley (7pm)

exhiBition: various participants (6–31 may)

performance: Jeremiah day / simone Forti (7pm)

presentation: speakeasy (12–7.30pm)

workshop: they give themselves away… (3pm)

discussion: the Vocal Knot (7pm)

presentation: stephen sutcliffe (7pm)

workshop: Latin american political chants (3pm)

workshop: they give themselves away… (3pm)

discussion: doublespeak (3pm)

presentation: speakeasy (12–7.30pm)

performance: Jimmy robert and ian white (7pm)

performance: school of sound (7pm)

performance: ann-James chaton and andy moor / chris mann /alex waterman (7pm)

conference: our speaking selves (2–7pm)

Film: the shout (2pm)

Film: my dinner with andre (2pm)

Film: the aristocrats (2pm)

24 25

People to look at:Robert AshleyFia BackströmPierre BismuthBen CainProfessor Deborah CameronStella CapesLeandro CardosoAnne-James Chaton

and Andy MoorSteven Connorcastillo/corralesJeremiah DayPaul EllimanChris EvansRachel Everard

and Carolyn CheasmanRobert FilliouSimone FortiWilliam Furlong’s Audio ArtsRyan GanderBeatrice Gibson

with Jamie McCarthyMelanie GilliganSharon HayesAnne Karpf

Eve KarpfJoan La BarbaraChris MannAdam PendletonFalke PisanoOliver PouliotSeth PricePlus Minus EnsembleJonathan RéeJulian Rhind-TuttJonnie RobinsonProfessor Sophie ScottDexter SinisterFrances StarkLouise SternStephen SutcliffeManuel SaizSchool of SoundTerry SmithThe ThreadAlex WatermanIan White and Jimmy RobertMark WilsherDr Laura Wright

Your Contribution:In the true spirit of collaboration we would like to ask teachers to email any

further suggestions for discussions or activities on the topic of Talk Show to:

eduintern@ica.org.uk