Audience & Speaker
Vandana
2016
Performance
55 Minutes
Centre for Useless Splendour, London
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist
DESCRIPTION
Audience & Speaker is a performance lecture that inverts the conventional power dynamic between artist and audience — where the speaker is visible and the audience holds the comfort of observation without exposure. The work originated from witnessing an artist talk where the audience fixated not on the work being presented but on the artist’s visible nervousness, treating the body as spectacle rather than engaging with the practice. In response, this performance lecture re-configures the entire dynamic. I deliver a full presentation of my selected works from behind a veil of my own hair — entirely at ease — while the audience is placed in a state of uncertainty, strangeness, impatience, and curiosity. The discomfort is shifted from the speaker to the viewer. What the work reveals is how dependent the conventions of public speaking are on the visible face, the legible expression, the familiar signals of authority — and how quickly those conventions collapse when the face is withdrawn.
I appear in the space in an official outfit with my face covered with my hair and give an interactive presentation of my selected works to the audience.
Vandana 