Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. So the saying goes,except that, psychologically, words spoken can be just as damaging. Work by nine artists in the latest exhibition at the Zabludowicz Collection, 'Weighted Words' brings to the fore the power and ambiguity of words and acknowledges that when it comes to language, context can change everything.
The political power of words is a recurring subject in the show. African-American artist Glenn Ligon's use of appropriated text quietly reveals how loaded racial language can be. Hanging above the central gallery are the words 'negro sunshine', written in large-scale, black-painted neon. The yellow glow shining through the dark paint is a crude, literal illustration of the words, but the phrase is taken from Gertrude Stein's novel about race and gender, 'Three Lives', in which her repeated use of those words serve to lessen their impact, likewise turning the harsh light of language into a warm glow.
Anri Sala's simple but affecting short film, 'Làk-kat', from 2004, also explores language in relation to race. Under subdued strip lighting, two Senegalese youths try to learn, by rote, words and phrases from their native Wolof language – as English subtitles appear on screen – including 'great white hope', 'pitch black' and white-out'. The fact that these boys struggle with their own language is a peculiar consequence of centuries of French colonial influence. During this time the Wolof language adopted most of its words for colours from the French, with the exception of black and white, meaning that the racial connotations associated with terms such as 'whitey' now get lost in translation.
The meaning of truth in the visual and verbal language of media reporting is the basis of Omer Fast's two-screen work, 'Her Face Was Covered'. On one side, footage of an overturned, burning truck is accompanied by a spoken account of how the attack occurred. The voice of the (assumed military) perpetratordescribesfiring missiles and how a woman in fatigues, who was seen approaching weapons by the truck, had to be 'taken out'. It seems a plausible account but the second screen tells a different story. Here lines of text from the narration are shown interspersed with carefully chosen slides of images thrown up to match the text by Google searches. The effect is far more subtle than it sounds, with the two simultaneous narratives creating a highly effective reminder of how words can alter our reading of images and vice-versa.
There's a more poetic take on language, gender and war in Mary Reid Kelley's black-and-white film, 'You Make Me Iliad', cleverly constructed in rhyming couplets, as well as the theatrical use of scripted narrative in Alexandre Singh's highly engaging, staged philosophical conversations between trios of anthropomorphised everyday objects. The impact of language as lyrics can be heard in Ruth Ewan's jukebox of protest songs (categories include 'anti-capitalism' and 'ecology') and in a related way in Dani Gal's display of LP covers of historical recordings from Lenin's speeches to marching songs of Nazi Germany.
But as a medium it's video that dominates proceedings here and there are none more in keeping with current trends than the works of Ryan Trecartin and Ed Atkins. LA-based Trecartin's high-octane, high-camp narratives fuse the amateur, exhibitionist extremes of YouTube with all the latest fast-paced video-editing techniques, using scripts that incorporate the vacuous language of reality TV wannabes and corporate business-speak. They would be headache-inducing to watch were they not so carefully constructed. You hope that Trecartin is holding up a critical mirror to the worst excesses of the 'me, me, me' media culture, rather than adding to it, but it's hard to be sure.
Atkins's films are less frenetic, but express just as complex a relationship between sound and sight. Shot in super-sharp HD and projected on a large screen, fragmented images of burning candles, blurry seascapes and saturated colour are accompanied by snatches of music and background conversation. If people feature they are shown only from the back and if there is a narrative, the viewer has to seek it out (Trecartin's and Atkins's films both come with scripts). This riotous combination of audiovisual fragments may be the best reflection of how we now ingest information, but in this context, particularly in the light of the recent tragic civilian and military casualties in Afghanistan, it's Fast's work that shouts loudest.