Reading of Of Other Spaces (sound- and textartwork, 2012)
Of Other Spaces (1967) by Michel Foucault.
Reading by Toshiba Tecra 8000, developed for Swedish synthetic voice.
Material:
Amplifier, two speakers, MP-3 player, eight posters with the text printed in English, mdf-board.
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The lecture, Des Espace Autres, Heterotopias, which becomes a text, translated into English and finally spoken by a synthetic voice; the transpositions that is done from a lecture to the written text and vice versa via the computer, are all stages of interpretations or reflections by a mind. It sounds as if the computer’s reading carries information. It sounds like an objective reading of a weather report. But listen closely you will understand at best, disconnected fragments due to a Swedish synthetic voice that tries to deal with English.
No intelligible system or structure. The ideas behind the text are no longer to be found. The text has been emptied of its content. Left behind remains the representation of human activity, the notion of what a language is. And connecting to Foucaults Heterotopia, as a counterpoint to the repressive state, language is in itself an element of power.
Michel Foucaults lecture ”Des Espace Autres” (1967) was published by the French journal Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité in October, 1984.
