ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how contemporary artists such as Sharon Hayes and Akram Zaatari engage and mobilize the history and legacy of political activism. It discusses use of spoken and written language as a medium of communication in contemporary art. Language here becomes a performative act that is meant to be transformative rather than simply expressive, informational, or referential. Hayes’s Symbionese Liberation Army Screeds stage the simulation of presence that undergirds the operational logic of radio broadcasting. The audience remains invisible, voices without bodies whose location is not known to the viewer of work; thus both its “liveness” and unity are imagined rather than seen. Circularity is operative in Hayes’s work in how her gaze into camera suggests a different mode of address than speaking directly to a present audience. Repetition and citation function differently in contemporary performances such as those by Hayes and Tribe than when they were mobilized to criticize modernist notions of authorship and authenticity in 1980s.
