Hear ICA’s interstitial spaces shaped by a polyphony of voices. Penn students collaborated with students from HEAD – Geneva to continuously read a selection of textual artworks every day for a week in February. An exhibition to hear read proposed the notion of speech as material gesture, in which both the texture of the word and its spoken quality are inscribed in space and time through the act of reading. The vocal interpretation of these artworks constructs an abstract and ephemeral reality that can be said to sculpt the spaces in which it occurs. This ongoing investigation into the materiality of artwork as a question of word and speech is crystallized through a series of publications that act as both score and memory.

An exhibition to hear read was performed by students from the yearlong seminar “Writing Through Art and Culture at Penn” and from the WORK.MASTER at Geneva University of Art and Design.