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Speechcraft features a meeting of the international public speaking club Toastmasters. Widely used by businesspeople as well as trainee lawyers and politicians, Toastmasters trains people from all walks of life to construct their public presence so that they look and sound like ‘leaders’.

Speechcraft is a performance work which takes a Toastmaster training session as a readymade performative situation. The artist inserts specific subject matter for speakers to respond to by giving an impromptu speech. In this version of the work, the subject matter given to the speakers were all objects from Carey Young's studio which she personally finds inspiring.

As with every Toastmaster meeting, all the resulting speeches were judged and evaluated by other Toastmaster members, as well as the audience, in a cycle of inspiration, review, and reward.

Carey Young has written: “Speechcraft is in many senses an opportunity for the invited public to think about the relationship between art, artists and the public by presenting Toastmasters as a kind of alternative space of creativity, interpretation, ritual and critique.”

In the first commission of this piece the work was hosted by the Oxford Toastmaster club Isis Speakers. The work was subsequently commissioned by Creative Time, New York (2008) and The Power Plant, Toronto (2009.) Each time it is staged the work is different, due to the unique contributions of the speakers taking part, the audience's reactions and involvement, and the inspirational objects from the artist's studio, a collection which grows and changes as she develops new artistic works.

 

 

 

 

 

Images from Speechcraft, Carey Young, 2007, as staged in Oxford, England. Photographs copyright Edmund Blok. Speakers from Isis Speakers Toastmaster Club. Above: Autumn Rowan Hull, audience member & Carey Young.

Below: images from Speechcraft, Carey Young, 2007, as staged in New York by Creative Time (2008). Photographs copyright Sam Horine. Speakers from various New York Toastmaster clubs including Federal Toastmasters, MINY Toastmasters and Metro Toastmasters.