The Words of Others at REDCAT
Saturday, September 16th
1pm - 8pm
REDCAT
631 W. 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012

The Words of Others (Palabras ajenas) is a Vietnam-era antiwar piece written in the form of a dramatic script. The Argentine artist Léon Ferrari created this “literary collage,” one of his essential political statements, by cutting and assembling text from various sources, including news agencies, history books, the Bible, and speeches by such political and religious figures as Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Pope Paul VI and Adolph Hitler.

The September 16th durational performance in the theater at REDCAT will be the first full staging of the work. Partial readings took place at the Arts Lab in London (1968) and in Buenos Aires at the Larrañaga Theater (1972). A cast of thirty readers will give a contemporary voice to the text and constitute a tribute to him as an artist and defender of culture, democracy, and civil rights. Ferrari’s literary collages share the experimental impulse of figures such as Julio Cortázar and Bertolt Brecht in literature and theater, as well as the political unrest of the counterculture movement of the 1960s.

More about the exhibition and performance at REDCAT here.