One of Vision Forum’s original nodes, Speech and What Archive (SWA) is parting from us. After almost 5 years of mutual exchanges, discussions and other joyful meetings the group is leaving our network. We are eternally grateful for everything that we have learned together and that SWA has contributed. We remember many joyful moments to from the early experiments on the CNEAI boat to the latest performance at Arbis in Norrköping.
The group has worked around notions about what we can and cannot say, and by doing this questions the group as a collective decision-making body. An example is the Speech and What Archive Paper Room which is the paper trace and trail from various organized workshops worldwide and has become the support for conversations and micro events. It is not only a work but a material space for research defined without apparent hierarchies.It becomes the structure for new interventions and is constituted as a living archive which interacts with additional elements as the work progresses. The space is thus re-played or replaced as new materials are added to those already there. At the heart of it, we question modes of the appearance and dissemination of knowledge and transmission, the original, the re-make and re-see and re-interpret.
We remember exhibitions and performances like: ‘Based on a true story’, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, 2012 ; ‘What the monkey says no one pays attention to’, TCB Gallery, Melbourne, 2012; ‘A Floating Conversation’, Cneai, Paris, 2012; ‘Avant Spectacle, a Micro Medicine Show’, Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme de Buisson, 2010; ‘Paola Pivi’s GRRR JAMMING SQUEEK presents A Constructed World Medicine Show’, Sculpture International Rotterdam, 2011; ‘Speakeasy Medicine Show’, Biennale de Belleville, 2010 and ‘Explaining contemporary art to live eels #6’, Villa Arson, Nice 2010.
Over the years, the group has also created three publications and a record. Founding member Anna Hess was also in residence at Norrköping Air in 2013. For those of you who are not familiar with SWA you can visit the Speech and What Archive website. The group was initiated by A Constructed World in 2009, the group includes Clémence de Montgolfier, Marie Gautier, Yann Sérandour, Anna Hess, Sébastien Pluot, Fabien Vallos, Etienne Bernard, Fabrice Reymond, Michele Robecchi, Matthew Rana and Guillaume Pavageau and many more have participated and contributed over the years.
