How does living under conditions of increased censorship and surveillance reshape perceptions of the self and the other? Who can speak truthfully today, and what becomes of truth when it cannot be spoken? Who is in control of what is said, if anyone?
Join artist Zorica Čolić and writer and curator Aidan Chisholm for a public conversation expanding on A Voice and Nothing More, a sound installation currently on view at Harvestworks on Governors Island. Moving between personal experience and broader cultural and political conditions, the conversation considers what it means to inhabit a voice under pressure and how agency might emerge from within discomfort.
Composed of three binaural sound pieces – Animal, Voice, and Dream – the work stages an ambivalence between an internal monologue and dialogue negotiating states of safety, exposure, and threat. The installation creates a space where speaking and listening feel slightly unstable, where the voice is both authentic and constructed, estranged yet relatable.
In dialogue, Čolić and Chisholm will discuss the conceptual terrain surrounding the work: how fragments drawn from different sources (political speeches, psychoanalysis, literature, dreams) came together not to offer resolution but to accumulate perspectives, voices, and uncertainties. Together, they will reflect on the understanding of language across social, cultural, and political contexts, and the ways the slip of the tongue, mistranslation or misinterpretation can interrupt or redirect thought. Who is in control of what is said, if anyone? How might psychoanalysis appeal as an alternative to the relentless rationalism of liberal humanism?
The discussion will also open up the process behind the work, how it evolved in relation to the site on Governors Island, and the way sculptural elements – fragmented body and animal parts – entered the installation. The program will include selected readings from the work’s scripts, offering another entry point into its reflections on truth, freedom, and the unstable position of the speaking subject.
