Burroughs dictum ‘Language is a virus from outer space’ says that language never speaks alone as a language. In Viral Speech, a contemporary, biotechnologically informed ritual act, the participants’ speech sounds follow the interests of their oral microbes. By changes of her saliva and respiratory flow the artists in the Museumsquartier donate suitable oral microbes, whose ecology is modelled by the online participants with sonograms and via pheromone pumps: The more hospitable it thereby becomes for the microbes, the more inhospitable and repellent it becomes for infectious viruses. By negotiating the viral dangers with the means of their voices, rather than from the outside, participants take part in a remarkable biopolitical ‘discussion’ that extends the concept of the subject to non-human actors.

The online audience uses voice spectrograms and pheromones to model
the ecology of microbes cultivated from participants’ saliva in the
Museumsquartier.

Remote: Q21/MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Schauraum Angewandte, room D

Credits: Jürgen Ropp, Joseph Knierzinger, Katherina T Zakravsky, Bozhidar Baltov, Mark Rinnerthaler, Ulla Rauter, Jörg Piringer.
Supported by Medical University Vienna, University of Applied Arts, Stadt Wien Kultur, BMK Section IV.

Time: Nov 14, 2020 07:00 – 08:00PM Vienna