Speakers’ Corner was once a sanctuary of free speech in the heart of London. The air once held the weight of revolution and change, with speakers such as Karl Marx, Marcus Garvey and Vladimir Lenin sharing their beliefs here. Now, it resonates with spectacle and provocation. Over the last decade, as smart phones have become smarter and internet speeds accelerated, the space has been co-opted by profit driven intentions and new agendas. Many speakers now arrive with production teams, others come solely to find content; which is later edited, shared, and profited from through social media and livestreaming platforms.
This new era of speakers serves an audience beyond the people that come to listen each week. Their intention isn’t changing the minds of others, but the possible virality of documented conflict. What appears to be discourse may be theatre at the expense of the people who attend, as they’re preyed upon for clicks and views. Political voices have been set aside, with religion taking center stage as it provides the path of least resistance towards inciting a debate and eventually documenting outrage.
This body of work presents my experience as an audience member visiting Speakers’ Corner over 6 weeks, and a response that is as calculated as that of the speakers who attend now.
Each week I looked to make sense of this theatre through photography, with each week my perspective becoming more jaded as the theatre of the space made itself known. I came with the hope of witnessing the foundation of change, but over time found that the characters who had the loudest voices were the ones who were upholding personas for profit. I witnessed arguments repeat themselves week-by-week, with pre-rehearsed statements and rhetorics which had been sharpened over years. If they weren't verbally sparring with a nemesis, they aimed to ensnare new audience members into arguments which the speakers have refined and have found ways to always win.
Police are the referees of the match, preventing fights while being used as characters in the performance. Much like the wrestlers I watched on TV as a child, every week they arrived in costumes to start a fight, yielding their special weapons and mementos yet throwing punches with no weight behind them, rather to glamourize separation and conflict. Words have become an instrument of revenue, with language sharpened to wound; its value measured in clicks and view. In this spectacle of conflict, offence is the finishing move. Victory is counted not in persuasion, but in digital impressions once the edit is complete. Yet beneath the roar of this staged contest, a quieter question lingers:
Can the spirit of free speech survive in a culture that rewards spectacle over sincerity?
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