‘The Voice One Cannot Control’ was a text/audio installation, originally commissioned for Concrete Feedback, curated by Brandon La Belle, Southern Californian Institute of Architecture, Los Angeles, Nov 2002.

‘The Voice One Cannot Control’ is a triptyph. Three stories about three places. Three stories written in London travel to Seoul and then to Los Angeles. At the same time they are translated from English to Korean and back again, from writing to speaking and back again. To travel to Los Angeles, the Korean audio tapes were translated back into their mother tongue, but into written rather than verbal English.

The installation consists of three pairs of texts in English (size determined by site) and three audio recordings (approximately 2 minutes each in length) in Korean. Each story exists as a pair of texts, set either side of a pillar at eye level, far apart to make simultaneous reading difficult but possible. Both texts are in English, one is the original, the other a written translation once removed through a Korean voice. The Korean audio recordings are placed between the texts, audible just at the point where the reader can no longer read both texts simultaneously.

See Jane Rendell, ‘Writing in place of speaking’, Sharon Kivland and Lesley Sanderson (eds.), Transmission: Speaking and Listening, (Sheffield Hallam University and the Site Gallery, 2003).