The exhibition Interaktion I. Speakers’ Corner reflects the subject of the personal range addressed in Um-Kehrungen. In a film-program Speakers’ Corner examines the personal perspective rendered by the medium of the human voice. Speakers’ Corner, the famous meeting place for public debate in London’s Hyde Park, originated as a reaction to the social and structural changes during the emergence of capitalism. Less know is its history as a site for executions, where in a carnevalesc public spectacle convicts where allowed to speak last words which sometimes would be used for church or monarchy critical agitational speeches. Speakers’ corner is traditionally and symbolically a site of class struggle, where wide range of different individuals – from activists of political and social movements, to freaks and conmen – cultivate the public speech.

Speakers’ Corner assembles a selection of works that experiment with the performance of the human voice as a signature of a speaking “I” and as a medium for the address of an other/ a public. Mostly in the first person singular these works mimic liveness, presence or intimacy. The exhibition unites documentary forms of report and comment, agitational rants, forms of the politics of the personal, as well as performances, which expand the contents of language by the vocal expression of the spoken word or by addressing an audience in a personal or “live” manner. Employing poetic tools like aggression, tempo, pathos as well as duration and delay the presented works deal with, comment on and subvert various media-formats – from the spoken word poem to the talk show – via the personal perspective. The presentation presents predominantly filmic works in an installation that resembles a cinematic setting.

With: Karl Holmqvist, Judith Hopf / Stephan Geene, Jesse Lerner, Maya Schweizer und Sean Snyder