Appropriate Language: Transcription and rearticulation as post-colonial performance strategies

This is a presentation of my spoken-word sound practice, which has engaged in the transcription and re-articulation of speakers recorded at Speakers’ Corner in London, as exemplified by the projects Speakers (2009) (https://stevenball.bandcamp.com/album/speakers)and Speakers Too (2015) (https://stevenball.bandcamp.com/album/speakers-too). It extends the work into an Australian context, through the creation of the new short piece performed here, based on recordings made at Speakers’ Corner in Sydney, constructed en route from the UK to Brisbane.

Following the performance I elaborate on and examine the practice, addressing both this and earlier iterations, with particular regard to questions of ethics, appropriation, agency; the nature of performance as public spectacle and public spectacle as performance. I cite examples of the appropriation of informal public speech and performance where it has been formally restructured and synthesized into new works, such as musical works by Steve Reich (It’s Gonna Rain,1965), and Gavin Bryars (Jesus’ Blood (never failed me yet), 1971), which in common with much of what one witnesses at Speakers’ Corner, are examples of testimonial, devotional, religious ‘content’.
This is further discussed in relation to the recent ‘conceptual poetry’ turn to appropriation (Marjorie Perloff, Unoriginal Genius 2010 and Against Expression eds. Goldsmith and Dworkin, 2011); exploring the implications of constructing works which appropriate texts as re- performance; reflecting on the recent controversy caused by Kenneth Goldsmith’s use of the autopsy report of Michael Brown (the 18-year-old African-American male fatally shot by a white Ferguson police officer) as a ‘found’ text in performance, as a case study of the ethical responsibility of the practice.

The role of the specificity of (my) voice in relation to text and language, is considered, returning to Roland Barthes’s concept of ‘the grain of the voice’ (Barthes, Image, Music, Text, 1977).