Articulate Objects

How do objects ‘speak’ to us? What happens to authorship when voice is projected into inanimate objects? How can one articulate an object into speech? Is the inarticulate body necessarily silent? These are just some of the questions brought up by this unique and unusual collection of essays, which presents subjects and categories often overlooked by the disciplines of art history, visual culture, theatre history and comparative literature. Drawing from and expanding upon the ‘Performing Objects, Animating Images’ academic session run by the Henry Moore Institute at the Association of Art Historians conference, held in London in 2003, this book presents thirteen essays that bring together a multidisciplinary approach to the animated object. Contributions range from literal accounts of magic lanterns, tableaux vivants, puppets and ventriloquist dummies, to the more abstract notions of voice displacement in audio art and authorship projection in writing machines. The contributors come from diverse backgrounds in art history, cultural history, comparative literature, and artistic, theatrical and curatorial practice, and all tackle the issue of ‘articulate objects’ from a range of lively and unexpected perspectives.

Author Biography

The Editors: Aura Satz is a Fellow at the London Consortium and an artist. She completed her doctorate at the Slade School of Fine Art, where she also held a Henry Moore Foundation post-doctoral fellowship between 2002 and 2004. Jon Wood coordinates the research programme and curates exhibitions at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. He is also an Associate Lecturer at Leeds University teaching on the M.A. course in Art History.