QUOTE—UNQUOTE PLATFORM LAUNCHES JUNE 26TH

When was the last time you were offered the microphone? Who was your audience and what did you say? Are your words still floating in the airwaves? Do you run away from the sound of your voice?

A popular saying claims that the most common fear among people is public speaking. It’s followed, on the second place, by death. Moreover, the last few years have had the eyes of the art world turn to the mouths of its interlocutors, in a discursive turn of the performative, completing a rotation started in the ‘60s.

In the current social media landscape, where self-expression becomes a perpetual talent show, self-development mantras grant daily workplace affirmations and information is bent in the shape of post-truth, Quote—Unquote platform proposes a dialogic turn and rhizomatic formats through artistic practice and its intersection with other fields of activity. We follow and provoke the juxtaposition of reading groups, radio shows, performances and performative scripts in order to create new productions and an understanding of the event in itself as a process of transformation and co-creation, in which we invite you to take part.

Through all this, we intend to surface out your curiosity and desire to approach it from multiple perspectives and voices. Quote—Unquote is a long-term interdisciplinary platform on (public) speech initiated by Infinite Conversation, an independent curatorial unit founded in Bucharest by Dan Angelescu, Irina Radu and Cristina Vasilescu.

QUOTE—UNQUOTE PODCAST AND MORE

Initially conceived as a suite of disparate events, the pandemic pushed us to deconstruct and reconstruct the first series of contributions online, with an extension in a few physical sites, as a sequence of collaborative intersections which investigate the relationship of public speaking with the self, the community and authority, exploring new possibilities of decodification and intervention. 

We start on June 26th with a reflexive podcast by Lidija Burčak, Swiss-Croatian visual anthropologist, writer and documentary filmmaker whose diary reading practice has been successfully touring in venues throughout Switzerland. The Quote—Unquote Podcast will continue with several episodes in July and August, existing as a broadcast space for sound works, spoken word practice, readings, teachings and aural miscellanea.

The following weeks will include contributions by artists and researchers Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Anna Barham, Vlad Brăteanu, Anca Bucur & Sergiu Nisioi, Maia Conran, Harun Morrison, mother tongues and Elena Trifan. Using language, voice, translation and other speech-related elements, they will explore and speculate on diverse topics: hypnosis, Gertrude Stein, the 5G technology and monkey puzzle trees all make an appearance, in the podcast and through other surprise formats.