February 7

In this lecture, Amelia Groom (also hosting a reading group on the haptics of written and spoken language) considers the mouth as a site of contact. Mouths are warm wet cavities into which we put food, and out of which come words. With these erogenous (eros-generating) zones, we taste, kiss, suck, sigh, sing, sip, spew forth, and get to know the world. They’re also sites of disciplinary inscription, where unevenly distributed regimes of power make contact with the flesh. Beginning with Anne Carson’s readings of the non-male voice in terms of disruptive leakiness and defilement, this lecture pays tribute to disobedient mouths in a range of literary, mythological, and artistic examples.

Amelia Groom is a writer based in Amsterdam. She completed her PhD in Art History and Theory at the University of Sydney in 2014. Her writing is published in various journals and exhibition contexts, and in 2013 she edited the Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press ‘Documents of Contemporary Art’ anthology on TIME. She teaches writing and theory at the Sandberg Instituut (Critical Studies and Master of Voice MAs) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (Graphic Design Department).