I went to liverpool to see an art exhibition by Sylvia Blocher. She made a video exhibition of famous utopian speeches that have somehow failed us (like all utopian speeches tend to), and used actors, poets and artists to recite them, giving the speeches new life and meaning. For example. she has a black male artist recite a speech by Angela Davies (Famous female Black Power activist and Prison Abolishonist), and she has a young female poet recite "the communist manifesto" by karl marx. The change in gender and age give the speeches a different appeal, it envigorates them and puts them in a different context or through a different lens. One of the things I felt when I saw a man recite the speech by angela davies was.. wow its so refreshing to hear a man say those things, and if you don't know the speech maybe it makes you understand it in a different way, maybe it makes you take it more seriously or highlight different parts of it. The feeling I got when I saw a young quite androgynous queer looking woman recite Marx was that it seemed to make his words feel modern and more up to date, which obviously IF it was not relevant today might have the opposite effect of maybe Jarring with the gender and age of the speaker.
All the speakers/Actors were green screened and juxtaposed onto a graphical backdrop, like a fabric pattern, but each pattern had some relation to the subject. The artists also have a part of their body highlighted in a darker or lighter color, I think this was some how a symbol, like a logo or a sign that may or may not have been connected to the speech itself, but highlighted the difference of the "signs" communicated with the different bodies used.
