‘Against and away from that hushing’: notes and scores for voices

Keynote presentation at the Association of Art Historians 49th Annual Conference, at University College London, 12-14 April 2023. What does it mean to speak in this space ‘for art history’? Speaking ‘to’ not ‘about’, speaking ‘with’ (in disparate company, scattered yet gathering, outside in)… Walking with the words of Trinh Minh-ha and Maria Lugones in my hands and ears, ‘against and away from that hushing of the manyness of the past in the present’, I assemble some off-key notes... to sound out some of the voicings and ventriloquisms echoing in my praxis of the last 30 years, to locate myself momentarily and uncomfortably ‘here’. Invoking words, gestures and interruptions that might be partially read, seen and heard (or not at all), I want to revisit and affirm these as small, tactical acts of disturbance and resistance, decolonial and otherwise. A farcical calling card (1995-ongoing), a disobliging ‘artist’s statement’, my ghosts of AAH conferences past (1998, 2008, 2018), and the multiplicity of voices coming into play in between and since – improvised choruses and ad hoc witnesses to mundane and fabulous displacements, to live archivery, aspiring and refusing (Notes on Return, 2003, Golden, 2005-, A COVEN A GROVE A STAND, 2019, seven x seven, 2021, Centenary, 2022, REWIND/REPLAY, 2022-23). How do you listen and attend to what you cannot hear