Critical Stages (Dec 2021)
Like a Whisper: Rethinking the Politics of Voice and Performance with Tania Bruguera
Abstract
This article analyses Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (2009), which creatively rewrites the widely distributed image of Fidel Castro’s victory speech in Havana (1959). By drawing on Xinghua Li, Brandon LaBelle and John Mowitt, the article discusses how the performance connects the whisper and frustrated revolutionary hopes, whilst contesting Western epistemologies. The article demonstrates how the whisper as a speaking from and to the margins is crucial for rethinking the politics of performance, and how to be in common otherwise.
