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Talk to Me—Puppet with Ben Morgan-Cleveland —Ventriloquisms and coordinating limbs.

Joined by Ben Morgan-Cleveland, leading exercises with puppets.

Ben Morgan-Cleveland is an art dealer turned artist. Solo exhibitions at Kai Matsumiya, Eli Ping, Shoot the Lobster, Doyers. Recently taught Special Projects class in Photography department at Pratt with Robert Snowden. Cofounded and ran Real Fine Arts from 2008 to 2018 with Tyler Dobson.

(Ventriloquize)

First broadcast on Montez Press Radio as Tongue and Cheek- Ep38: Talk to Me—Puppet with Ben Morgan-Cleveland — Saturday, February 1st, 2020 11AM-12PM.

A radio series of proprioceptive exercises, interviews about practices of communication, and archival sound. A routine for warming up our means of communication. Presented monthly as a combination of live and prerecorded sessions.

Lend me your ears!
-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works… Dorothy Parker caught eloquent examples: "'Well!' the young man said. 'Well!' she said. 'Well, here we are' he said. 'Here we are' she said, 'Aren't we?' 'I should say we were' he said, 'Eeyop! Here we are.' 'Well!' she said. 'Well!' he said, 'well.' "
-- Roman Jakobson, “Linguistics and Poetics”

To reach an arm out of one’s mouth, peek through one’s ear, and speak out of one’s eye. Communication happens by any means possible. It is the different ways bodies extend themselves, as limbs that bridge things—reaching out, stretching and sometimes touching, with a light tap, “Marco!”

How we voice, how we gesture, how we manner, how we empathize.
Exercises to find all ways of thinking of language, and to exercise them as their own paths of communication.

To empathize over radio. Invite to do the same—feel, mimic, echo. “Polo”
The sound of leading, of following, of teaching speaking.
And learning to make a body of a limb.

"Tongue and Cheek" was first developed and aired on Montez Press Radio beginning in the summer of 2018. Montez Press Radio is an experimental radio station and commissioning platform for unexpected works from artists and other creative voices. MPR continues to air new episodes of Tongue and Cheek during its monthly live broadcast at 46 Canal St in Chinatown, New York.