LONDON.- To mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, one woman artist Monica Ross aims to carry out 60 solo, collective and multi-lingual recitations of the Declaration in different contexts and with different groups of people. This is number 13.
On 19 September the collective recitation, from memory, of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, at
Beaconsfield, will be made exclusively by artists. New confirmations to co-recite are arriving daily from practising artists.
Artists will have chosen one (or more) articles of the Declaration significant to them and committed the words to memory in a preferred language. The collective recitation becomes a metaphor for the struggle for memory and consciousness of Human Rights. The emphasis of the work is on the attempt, and the difficulty, of being able to meet the Declaration's call to constantly "keep it in mind" and be able to voice or act on it especially when under pressure. This performance will be broadcast on Resonance FM on Monday 21 September, 8-9pm.
To date collective recitations have included contributions in Arabic, Armenian, French, German, Irish, Italian, Punjabi, Spanish, Macedonian and Slovenian. Recitations have been negotiated in a wide range of venues, including the House of Commons, The British Library and Whitworth Art Gallery.
Monica first performed a solo version of this work, rightsrepeated an act of memory, produced as part of Chronic Epoch by Beaconsfield in 2005.
The national project Anniversary an act of memory is curated by Jason E. Bowman for Monica Ross.