In this talk, Trinh T. Minh-ha focuses on “Voice” as an activity by which the text’s social, ethical, and aesthetic positioning is conveyed to the reader/viewer. It draws on Trinh’s last book, Lovecidal. Walking with the Disappeared (2016), to explore the intervals between saying and seeing, speaking and hearing, or between language, image, sense, and sound.

"Words, turning strange, taking room, as if heard for the first time…each word is a hyperword—a multiplicity whose field of interfertile references spreads, implodes or dwindles over time, hybridizing and bypassing its own rules of survival. Old resonances fade and empty out. The transient, the ephemeral, the fragmentary and all that threaten to disappear are the very forms and forces that drive writing as manifesting….Telling inflects what is being told" (quoted from Lovecidal).

This is the third event in our year-long season dedicated to the questions posed by the work of Trinh T. Minh-ha and how they address art, culture, and society today.

The Voice of Multiplicity: A talk by Trinh T. Minh-ha

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts is a nonprofit exhibition venue and research institute dedicated to contemporary art. It was founded in 1998, at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

The Wattis Institute is a place for showing art and for thinking about art. We spend time with artists and pay close attention to their ideas.

We like to work with one artist at a time—one artist presents an exhibition in the gallery, one artist stays in the apartment on a residency, and one artist is the subject of a year-long research initiative. 

The Wattis Institute is a headquarters for contemporary art for everyone in the Bay Area, and runs an active event space (featuring an artist-designed bar) for discussions, performances, screenings, artworks, and drinks.