Speaking And Listening

Speaking and Listening is a book conceived by the artists Yann Sérandour, Félicia Atkinson, Julien Bismuth, and the curator Sophie Kaplan, revolving around questions of narrative, listening and improvisation.
It is the last episode in the cycle While I was also listening [...], developed by La Criée contemporary art center in 2017 and 2018, which included in-house and extra muros events in the form of exhibitions, events, and residencies. The book is centered around a long unpublished transcript of a talk poem by the American poet and performance artist David Antin, entitled framing and being framed. Adding to the corpus of Antin's works, this typically autobiographical text reveals Antin's eloquent use of quotidian events to philosophical ends. The contributions that respond to Antin's text are themselves innovative, composed by poets, thinkers and artists from different generations and nationalities, linked by their common interest in investigating questions of orality, listening, narrative, transmission, improvisation, translation, utterance and enunciation.