Jane Jin Kaisen
What you are speaks so loud I can't hear what you say / Don't tell me words don't matter (Whitney ISP Exhibition)
2008STUDIO PROGRAM EXHIBITION
Presented by Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program
at 548 West 22nd Street, 3rd floor
May 17 – June 1, 2008
An exhibition of works by the 2007–08 Studio Program participants of the Independent Study Program: ERIC ANGLÈS / LINDSAY BENEDICT / KAJSA DAHLBERG / CARLA EDWARDS / ÅSA ELZÉN / BEATRICE GIBSON / TAMAR GUIMARÃES / JANE JIN KAISEN / RUNO LAGOMARSINO / MELEKO MOKGOSI / SRESHTA RIT PREMNATH / SEAN RASPET / EDWARD SCHEXNAYDER / AUSTIN SHULL
What you are speaks so loud I can’t hear what you say / Don’t tell me words don’t matter
Multimedia installation by Jane Jin Kaisen 2008
Eleven actors were asked to study and impersonate the gestures and tone of voice of a number of famous speakers. The speeches performed were chosen from across the political spectrum and speak from very different positions and with varying degrees of political and personal stakes. A common thread across the speeches chosen is a concern the possibilities, limitations, necessities, or dangers of being silent or silenced and of speaking for oneself or speaking on behalf of others. An group of college students were asked to act as audience and were instructed to give emotional responses to the words and performance of an imaginary speaker by the use of facial expressions, body language and acclamation. Their actions were choreographed as well as improvised. The recorded sound and video of the performed speeches and the audience was later separated, edited, and reassembled.
“Don’t tell me words don’t Matter ‘I have a dream’ – just words? ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ – just words? ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ – Just words? Just speeches?"
In a speech given during the Democratic Primary, Barack Obama argued that words are not just empty promises, but that they are vital for inspiring to hope and action. The speech was a response to criticism from his opponents that he was all rhetoric and no action. He was later accused of plagiarism, as the speech highly resembled a speech earlier presented by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who, like Obama, has David Axelrod as his speechwriter. Deval Patrick later told The New York Times that he had given Obama a portion of his speech, saying: “The point is more important than whose argument it is. It’s a transcendent argument.”
The concept of plagiarism doesn’t apply easily in the context of political speeches. The famous lines Obama quoted, after all, were themselves taken from un-credited sources: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s "We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” closely resembles Henry David Thoreau’s “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear,” which itself echoes Francis Bacon’s “Nothing is terrible except fear itself.” John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” is not only very close to something Kahlil Gibran wrote in 1925 “Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?” -it also came from Kahlil Gibran’s work entitled The New Frontier, which is what John F. Kennedy called his administration’s new policy philosophy.
What you are speaks so loud, I can’t hear what you say
Cicero, one of Rome’s greatest orators, was not only a gifted composer of speeches, he was also able to increase their effect by his mastery of gestures and thereby stir the emotions of his audience. His last great oratorical achievement was ‘The Philippics’ directed against Marcus Antonius who became enraged by the insult. Cicero was subsequently murdered in a brutal manner. Not satisfied with this revenge, Antonius ordered that Cicero’s severed head be displayed on the rostra in the center of the Roman Forum, the place from which the living Cicero’s voice had insulted him amidst a large audience of witnesses. While there were precedents for the display of enemies’ heads in the Forum, Antonius ordered a very unusual addition to the grisly display. He commanded that the orator’s hands also be severed and displayed on the rostra next to the orator’s head. Antonius knew that it was not only the great orator’s voice that had spoken against him with such eloquence, but also his hands. (source: “Gestures and Acclamations in Ancient Rome” by Gregory S. Adrete)
