1st Edition
Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art
Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art volume calls attention to the unexpected prevalence of ventriloqual motifs and strategies within contemporary art.
Engaging with issues of voice, embodiment, power, and projection, the case studies assembled in this volume span a range of media from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, performance, architecture, and video. Importantly, they both examine and enact ventriloqual practices, and do so as a means of interrogating and performatively bearing out contemporary conceptions of authorship, subjectivity, and performance. Put otherwise, the chapters in this book oscillate seamlessly between art history, theory, and criticism through both analytical and performative means. Across twelve essays on ventriloquism in contemporary art, the authors, who are curators, historians, and artists, shine light on this outdated practice, repositioning it as a conspicuous and meaningful trend within a range of artistic practices today.
This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, media studies, performance, museum/curatorial studies, and theater.
Introduction
Voiceovers
JENNIE HIRSH AND ISABELLE LORING WALLACE
PART I
Pulling Strings
1 Voice, Vivification, and Subjectivity
Jasper Johns' Ventriloquist
ISABELLE LORING WALLACE
2 Over My Dead Body
Puppets, Performance, and Paralysis in Cardiff and Miller’s The Marionette Maker
JENNIE HIRSH
3 Putting Words in Your Mouth and Images in Your Eyes
COURTNEY MCCLELLAN
4 Dislocated Voices
Wael Shawky’s Cabaret Crusades
KATE O’CONNOR
PART II
Dummies
5 García’s Juegos
Puppets, Immunity, Torture
JUAN CARLOS GUERRERO-HERNANDEZ
6 Dialectic Silence
Schizophonia in Juan Muñoz’s Ventriloquist Dummy
CINTIA GUTIERREZ REYES
7 Tadeusz Kantor’s Dead Dummies
KATIE GEHA
PART III
Speech Acts
8 I Remember
On Modern Living
NORA WENDL
9 Embolalia
Anna Deavere Smith Throwing Her Voice
JANE BLOCKER
10 Re-siting Marx
Okwui Enwezor, Ventriloquism, and the Das Kapital Oratorio
KERR HOUSTON
PART IV
Echoes
11 In a Manner of Speaking
CATHERINE CLOVER
12 LITHIC RECORD
NICHOLAS B . JACOBSEN AND NINA ELDER
Biography
Jennie Hirsh is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Isabelle Loring Wallace is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of Georgia.
"Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art is a fascinating collection of essays on the use of ventriloquism and puppetry in contemporary art. The writing, research, and arguments are exemplary. The editors and writers make a compelling case for considering the topic of ventriloquism in relationship to painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video, and even architecture."
--Jennie Klein, Ohio University
