Movement for public speech – Polonca Lovšin

Installation

Within the framework of e.city – Ljubljana

Polonca Lovšin Movement for public speech, 2015

This artistic device imagined by the artist Polonca Lovšin implies an active participation of the public. Every participant can improvise himself as a speaker on the platform which is accessible from the stairs, but at one condition… find his own public! The speaker’s speech can be heard only if someone is moving on the platform underneath, generating with those movements energy.

The speech givers above and the movers on the platform below are dependent on each other. The electricity generated by movement is used for the microphone and enables the person speaking to produce a loud speech in a public space. If the speakers don’t have supporters, their speech will not be heard.

This autonomous unit, not connected to an existing electrical grid, suggests a new system: autonomous, independent, free, yet based on collaboration. It suggests a different order between the people on the top and the ones below. The project empowers the audience, the speakers and the people who produce electricity through their movement with an awareness of how they must depend on one another.

The content of the 10-minute speeches along with performative actions can open up a diversity of perspectives on the meaning and politics of freedom. Today, as put forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, protected by the United Nations, freedom is considered a basic human right. As Europeans who are living in a union of nation-states in which diverse histories, economies and politics meet, we sometimes forget that our basic human rights which are connected to freedom, such as freedom of expression, freedom of speech and freedom of movement, areoften violated and manipulated.

This device belongs to the artistic footpath GardenWalk including the work of slovenian artists.