Past Event
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
– Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
– This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
– This event takes place in Gallery 2 at Whitechapel Gallery
– You must purchase a ticket to attend the event. If you require a Personal Assistant to support your attendance, we can offer them a seat free of charge, but it must be arranged in advance.
– If the ticket price affects your attendance, please email tickets@whitechapelgallery.org to be added to the guest list (no questions asked, but dependant on availability).
– This event is suitable for those over the age of 16
– We are unable to provide British Sign Language interpretation for this event
– We are unable to provide live closed captioning or CART for this event.
– This event last approximately 2 hours. There are no rest breaks currently scheduled during this event.
– An audio recording of the event can be obtained by emailing publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org following the event.
Transport
– To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
– Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
– Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
Live Recording
Please note: we audio record all events for the Whitechapel Gallery Archive. This audio material may also be used for our Hear, Now podcast series.
Thursday 14 September | 7pm | £5
Collective speech – the act of speaking, chanting or singing in unison—carries many important meanings in modern culture. From socialist hymns like the ‘Internationale’ to the Lord’s Prayer, and from ‘Not my King!’ to ‘Lock her up!’, choral speech combines ritual, resistance and spirituality in surprising ways.
This event explores how collective songs and chants work as expressions of group solidarity and political protest. Alan Finlayson discusses the history and politics of the protest song, Ananya Kabir considers the synergy of voices, bodies, and movement found in processions, Noreen Masud explores collectivity in voicing puppetry and Rory Pilgrim reflects on voice and activism in relation to their practice. The discussion is chaired by Matthew Taunton.
The evening concludes with the London premiere of Pilgrim’s 2019 film The Undercurrent, which poetically explores how 10 teenage activists in Idaho come together to find a collective voice in response to climate change.
In partnership with the University of East Anglia. Supported by the British Academy.
In a time of climate crisis The Undercurrent asks how we deal with such an overwhelmingly global issue on a deeply intimate and personal scale. Filmed in Boise, Idaho in the USA, the film was made with 10 Youth Climate Activists from Boise and small towns from the surrounding area who responded to an online open call. While the climate crisis appears to be the most important theme, the activists explore how climate change interconnects with other aspects of their lives including family, difficulties with religion, friendship, fighting for gender equality and the essential need of a home.
Soundtracked by an original orchestral score composed Pilgrim and singers in Boise, music and song flow throughout to explore the emotional means we have to articulate crisis. In these uncertain times globally, The Undercurrent questions what makes us feel like we belong somewhere – it is a home, a country or each other?
Alan Finlayson is Professor of Political & Social Theory at the University of East Anglia. He teaches and writes about democratic theory, political culture and rhetoric. From 2020–22 he was Co-Investigator on the research project ‘Our Subversive Voice? The History and Politics of English Protest Music’ which produced this website cataloguing hundreds of years of song: https://oursubversivevoice.com. A book will be out sometime in 2024. He is currently Co-I on the AHRC funded project “Speech! Speech!: Dramatising Rhetorical Citizenship” which involves going around the country with a theatre company teaching rhetoric and speechmaking to people who don’t usually get listened to. See here for details: https://www.dasharts.org.uk/public-house
Ananya Jahanara Kabir is Professor of English Literature at King’s College London. Her research spans creolisation across the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds, critical philology, and the relationship of literary and embodied cultural expressions, including dance. Between 2013-2018, she directed the ERC Advanced Grant funded project, ‘Modern Moves’, which investigated the history and global popularity of African diasporic social dances. Her current theoretical explorations of ‘Alegropolitics’ and ‘creolisation’ flowed out of that project. Ananya has been awarded India’s Infosys Prize in the Humanities and Germany’s Humboldt Research Prize, and, in July 2023, was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.
Noreen Masud is a Lecturer in Twentieth Century English Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her first book is Stevie Smith and the Aphorism (OUP, 2022); her second is A Flat Place (Hamish Hamilton (UK) and Melville House (US), 2023).
Rory Pilgrim works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through a different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops. In an age of increasing technological interaction, Rory’s work creates connections between activism, spirituality, music and how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens.
Recent Solo Shows include: WAMX, Turku (2022), Kunstverein Braunschweig (duo-2021), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2020), Between Bridges, Berlin (2019) Ming Studios, Boise (2019), Andriesse-Eyck Gallery, Amsterdam NL (2018) and South London Gallery (2018). Rory has also made commissions, screenings and performances for Serpentine Galleries, London (2022), MoMA, New York (2022), Centre Pompidou, Paris (2021), Glasgow Film Festival (2020), Images Festival, Toronto (2019) and Transmediale Festival, HKW, Berlin (2019). In 2019, Pilgrim was the winner of the Prix de Rome.
Matthew Taunton is Associate Professor in Literature at UEA. He currently holds a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, for which he is writing a book called The Collective Voice. His most recent books are Red Britain: the Russian Revolution in Mid-Century Culture and A History of 1930s British Literature (co-edited with Benjamin Kohlmann).
