JENNIFER LINDSAY
jennifer lindsay (canada/the republic of ireland) is a tkaronto based artist-researcher working in theatre, video, ceramics, and sound. spanning art and health sciences, her practice is informed by memoirs of the body, language disfluency, and crip time.
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SPEAK, MEMORY!
location tbc
2026
CLARK CENTRE FOR THE ARTS
apr 6 - apr 29, 2024
on view in 2026, SPEAK, MEMORY! is a dual-installation with graeme dyck that aims to facilitate a multi-sensorial inquiry into the material sights and sounds of remembering and language disfluency.
when visitors encounter SPEAK, MEMORY! they are welcomed by a 6 x 2 foot rectangular box made of plywood located at the centre of the gallery space. equipped with circular peepholes, the colour-washed box resembles an enlarged speaker. inside the box, surrounded by infinity mirrors to upend linear forms of engagement with craft, are 5 square-shaped porcelain tablets. ranging between 5.4 x 4.7 and 4 x 4.4 inches, the tablets vary in hues of sunshine yellow, burnt orange, magenta, warm grey, and royal blue. embedded in the tablets by way of letterpress type, are words relating to language disfluency and memory phenomena. words like vaguely, performing memory, and flashbulb memory.
only when listeners are close enough to look through the peepholes inside the box, will they also hear a soundscape playing on a loop. it includes manipulated text-based recordings in the same vein as the tablets (i can’t remember, i am losing language, and i forget), contact-mic recordings of the tablets themselves, and neural zaps and zips synthesised out of spoken words. speakers often overlap and interrupt each other, creating a sonic mesh of half-grasped syllables that parallels the tablets.
outside of the box, distorted, stretched, and overlapping projections of the tablets can be seen playing on the gallery walls.
SPEAK, MEMORY! considers language disfluency, rituals of remembering, and time.
anomia presents similarly to how jjjjjerome ellis describes their block stutter “i am both speaking and not speaking. mid-sentence i block on a word. sound stops coming from my mouth, but i haven't reached the end of my thought." anomia is an experience of delayed language recall, not an experience of memory loss. when i became aware of my anomia from a brain injury, i mistakenly thought i was experiencing the latter. in an attempt to correct this, i brought an old theatre habit into my ceramics and sound practices, italian-run. italian-run involves actors rapidly reciting lines from a play until the end of the script is reached. if a mistake is made, actors start from the beginning and don’t stop until they have made their way through the entire script successfully. italian-run manifested in SPEAK, MEMORY! looks and sounds like words running into and tripping over each other.
mostly illegible and unintelligible, SPEAK, MEMORY! documents the above ritual of remembering doubling as a coping mechanism vested in cure. it also documents a shift in spotting the difference between memory and language disfluency, and - most importantly - a door opening for disabled speech interested in crip time. visitors are invited to confront and delight in their own relationships with language, remembering, and time across multiple senses.
rooted in sonic research from REMEMBER TO FORGET and early explorations of
so-called communication disorders with injured minds,
a selection of ceramic tablets from this series was first displayed at the CLARK CENTRE FOR THE ARTS in a group exhibition with the brain injury society of toronto (bist) in april 2024.
SPEAK, MEMORY! borrows its name from the title of vladimir nabakov’s autobiography.
special thanks to the brain injury society of toronto (bist) and meri perra for their work, kristine kim and rochelle rubinstein for their second set of eyes, jorge daza for installing my work with care, and graeme dyck for their influence and openness with the 2026 iteration of this project.