Art Metropole

#04941

The Speech Writer

Artist

Bani Abidi

Date

2011

Publisher

Raking Leaves

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Hardcover

ISBN

978-0-9556674-4-2

Size

5.1 × 11.4 × 5 cm

Length

700 

The Speech Writer is a fictional documentary presented in the form of ten flip books. The contents follow a day in the life of a retired political speech writer. Surrounded by the memories of his family and his vast collection of speeches, he is a creature of habit, idiosyncratic behavior and reclusive existence. Retired from a lifetime of public service work, his connection with the outside world takes the form of a daily broadcast from the comfort of his home. Passersby, now accustomed to the perplexing array of loudspeakers wired to the outside of his house, stop to listen for a few moments each day. As they move on, the speakers continue to broadcast the voice of the speech writer across the neighbourhood. We cannot hear him speak but witness instead a moment of ultimate freedom in the life of a man who formulated the rhetoric, visions, dreams and declarations of others. The connection between what he may have said in his service as a speech writer and what he says now is deliberately left in abeyance. We engage instead in the lingering pathos of a man of words, whose muteness sounds the joy of other kinds of public address.

APC