Shape of a Right Statement
2008
Video, 00:05:15.
Materials:
Collection: Courtesy of the artist and Clifton Benevento, New York.
The work shown here was also recorded at Silver Platter. It formulates one of the ideas behind full body quotation: that new insight can be communicated through the de-subjectivation and re-contextualisation of existing statements. In 2007 Amanda Baggs, an activist for the recognition of autistic people’s rights, posted a manifesto on YouTube. In My Own Language has, to date, been watched more than one-and-a-quarter million times. Wu Tsang reperforms the second part of this video, in which a Speech Generation Device reads out in English what Baggs has been saying all along in her own language. In his rendering the subject speaks not for itself but through itself. The performer becomes a mere device, but tears keep coming to his eyes. The message speaks for itself, but at the same time it speaks up for others. (AK)
