Abstract The article discusses the aesthetic and political aspects of Speaker Sculptures – an ongoing series of participatory site-specific sound artworks by the artist Benoît Maubrey. Informed by pragmatist aesthetics and combining artwork analyses with ethnographic observations, the text focuses on the expressive affordances of the sculptures and the way the participants act upon them. Utilizing a variety of communication technologies, Speaker Sculptures bridge the gaps between the public, private and virtual spaces and allow the participants to perform in the public space without being physically present in them. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s theory of the public as the political, Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics and Chantal Mouffe’s antagonism theory, the article discusses the political implications of such performances.
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