Unbidden Tongues #6: Reading the New York Times by Lorraine O’Grady

Description

Unbidden Tongues #6: Reading the New York Times took the form of an event, held on Saturday, April 9 from 4–6pm at Kunstverein München. The event unfolded over a newly conceived spoken-word version of Lorraine O’Grady’s collage series Cutting Out the New York Times. The initial work consists of twenty-six ‘cut-out’ or ‘found’ newspaper poems that O’Grady made on consecutive Sundays from June to November in 1977. This booklet—which contains the poem The Renaissance Man Is Back In Business—acted as a guide for listeners at the event, during which five of the poems from the series were recited and broadcast through a public announcement system installed at Kunstverein München, reinterpreting the poems through their performance while still maintaining a commitment to the original format from which they sprung: print media and its oral translations in broadcasting.

Since its beginnings in 2020, Unbidden Tongues has published previously produced work by cultural practitioners busy with questions surrounding civility and civic life—particularly in relation to language and its administration. Each title is printed in black-and-white and made with the intention to keep production efforts low, easily reproducible and financially sustainable, so as to contribute as effectively as possible to a wider circulation of the work. Unbidden Tongues is edited by Isabelle Sully and the series is designed by Matt Hinkley.