Who is speaking? Sprechen. Stimme. Autorität / FAIR FOR ART

Nancy Spero develops language as a political visual language. In Explicit, Licit Exp and Thou Shalt Not Kill, writing, bodies, and signs come together. Here, language does not merely name; it acts. It makes violence, oppression, and social power structures visible, while at the same time becoming a medium of resistance. Words and signs appear as part of a physical, feminist, and political visual language, opening up the possibility of opposing existing power structures.

With Lilo Nein, the question shifts towards the position of the speaking person herself: Who is speaking? The persona Lilo Nein constitutes herself as part of the artistic work—as role, voice, and concept. In Der Versprecher and Paradoxie der Sprache, language, body, and emotion become open and fluid forms. The boundary between personal expression and artistic construction remains deliberately blurred. The voice does not appear as the expression of a stable subject, but as something that changes through the act of speaking. In this way, authority also becomes fragile: the speaking person never speaks from a completely fixed position.

In Marko Zink’s work, the question of voice and authority emerges through the photographic medium itself. In the series alles was sie sagen, he stages portraits of writers such as Oscar Wilde and Sylvia Plath. He combines text, staging, and analogue photography. The boiling of analogue film, a characteristic method in Marko Zink’s practice, intervenes in the photographic material and calls into question the fundamental criteria—and thus the authority—of photography as a medium of memory and documentation. In the series tragödien, human and animal elements merge into hybrid beings. Drawing on Dürrenmatt’s 21 Punkte zu den Physikern, language becomes a voice between human and animal, image and text. Elfriede Jelinek wrote an essay for Marko Zink in relation to this series, which she also recorded herself as a soundtrack.

Who is speaking? therefore asks less about a singular, clearly defined voice than about the conditions under which a voice becomes effective: How do language and images become carriers of authority—and where does this authority begin to become fragile?