Tongue Takeover considers the experience of embodying another person, and of letting your mouth be a vessel for their voice. The films in this program show the artist or their subjects lip syncing, where they’ve learnt not only the words but also how they’re said. In Meiro Koizumi’s Oral History, the mouths aren’t lip syncing, but some of them are regurgitating untruths spread by ultranationalist media.
Featuring Gary Hill, Mouth Piece (1978); Myriam Jacob-Allard, Les quatre récits d’Alice (2019); Kurdwin Ayub, pretty-pretty (2019); Joseph Wilson, Isn’t It a Beautiful World (2021); Agnieszka Polska, I Am the Mouth II (2014); Meiro Koizumi, Oral History (2013-2015).
Tongue Takeover is the first chapter of the online program Takeover curated by Julian Ross for e-flux Video & Film, and unfolding in six chapters between September 22 and December 15, 2022, with the films and videos of each chapter streaming for two weeks.