At the MA Design Curating & Writing, I taught a three-part workshop on silence and collectivity. The workshop explored issues of speaking for or about another, and invited the students to expand their skills of design critique to immaterial production.
Readings included texts on sound art and activism (such as Douglas G Barret's text on Ultra-red’s use of John Cage’s 4”33’ to create collective spaces) and writings on human rights and silence (such as Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s texts on asylum seekers who are denied the right to remain silent and whose voice, particularly their accent or dialect, is made available to surveillance and analysis).
Each student contributed an audio essay on a specific theme under the heading of Politics of Silence. I also guided them in developing a public format to broadcast their work. The final outcome was a WhatsApp Broadcast List. Subscribers received one text and essay sound file per day.
