Allyson Clay in Residence

Description:

Allyson Clay’s residency centered around new strategies in feminist video. She worked in collaboration with poets Lisa Robertson and Nathanaël to produce elements of a performative video work that explored the phenomenon of “interior speech,” the silent conversation that one has with oneself as if speaking to another person.

The project explored silence as loudness and critiques the univocality of the speaking subject, blurring simplistic binaries around gender and sexuality. In exploring the notion of doubling, reflection, and mirroring of the self, the artists made an experimental space in which they engaged with “feminism” in terms of refusal, expression, and potential. 

The resulting work, Untitled Photo Series (Interior Speech) (2008), was featured in The F Word, a group exhibition of feminist media at Western Front.