THROWING VOICES: THE COMMODIFICATION OF CULTURE, FROM ART BIENNIALS TO CELEBRITY

Through their artistic practice, Common Culture redeploy the ‘throwing of voices’ to investigate the commodification of culture, from the art biennial to celebrity. This approach will be discussed via two specific artworks.
The New El Dorado (2010) responded to the context of the art biennial, and in particular, Manifesta 8. Exploring the phenomena of cultural consumption, tourism and the tradition of the historical “Grand Tour”, the work narrates an encounter between the specific characteristics of a place and the culture of others. It responded to conventions in Biennial practices related to the local and the global, discussing inherent problems with current models of socially engaged practices. The work utilises a script written from an explicitly British context delivered through actors from the regions of Murcia and Valencia. The tensions that arise from this, and the analysis of cultural engagement within it, raise issues around the alienating process of speaking for others.
Vent (2014) was formed around a convergence of the contexts of ventriloquism, from the disassociated voice, the political associations of throwing voices (or the mediation of the voice) and the mania of binary extremes within the psychological conditions of late capitalism. The deconstruction of the ventriloquist form is intended to allow a questioning of the broadcast and consumption of talent and celebrity confession shows as a cycle of consumption. The act of speaking through others is deployed via the deconstruction of the ventriloquist routine to discuss the power relationships between the produced commodities (television show, celebrity) and audience.