Free entry
Sat 2 & Sun 3 Aug, 12-5pm each day
Gallery 2
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our exhibitions as accessible as possible for every visitor. 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.
For complete access information about the gallery, please visit https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/.
Slangon is an open invitation to The London Open Live visitors to co-create a non-verbal artificial sign language. Artificial languages have a rich history from Klingon in Star Trek and the curious whistling in the children’s TV programme The Clangers to Martha Rosler’s 1975 video Semiotics of the Kitchen, to the constructed Dothraki language in The Game of Thrones. Yet despite this, there isn’t a non-verbal equivalent. Artist Aaron Williamson is a deaf bilingual signer/speaker and will work one-to-one with visitors to translate a single ‘word’ of their choice into Slangon. Abstract gestures, whistling, stamping, anything that is non-verbal is encouraged. Having physically invented their ‘word’, participants are invited to record it direct to camera for inclusion in the ‘Slangon Introductory Vocabulary Video’ that will form a legacy artwork.
A BSL interpreter will be present.
This is a participatory performance, and visitors are welcome to participate, watch or both.
Aaron Williamson is an artist who, over the past twenty-five years, has created over 300 unique performances, videos and installations in Britain, Europe, Japan, China, Australia, USA, South America, Canada and other countries around the world. Aaron has a PhD in Critical Theory from the University of Sussex (1997) and has published widely. His monograph Performance / Video / Collaboration was co-published by LADA and KIOSK in 2007. He has been awarded, among others, the Helen Chadwick Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2000-2001); a three-year AHRC Fellowship at BIAD, University of Central England, (2004-2007); and the Stephen Cripps Studio Bursary, Acme Studios (2013-2014).
Williamson’s work is informed by his experience of becoming deaf and by a politicised and progressive sensibility towards disability. At a University of California San Diego lecture in 1998, he coined the term ‘Deaf Gain’ as a counter-emphasis to ‘hearing loss’. In 2019, a retrospective of his work was exhibited at the Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester. Williamson is currently working on a full-scale exhibition and retrospective at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton to open in October 2025.
