Participatory Democracy and the Future of Karaoke
public intervention
Commissioned on the occasion of the 2008 Democratic National Convention [DNC], as part of the curatorial project Dialog:City, this large-scale public project examined the situation of Denver residents at the time of the DNC. The people of Denver played host to an international media event but had the same access to it that anyone in the world would, through television broadcasts coming from the restricted-access convention center. Through the development of a series of custom-designed karaoke speech tracks and the establishment of a network of Karaoke Convention Centers [repurposed karaoke bars where residents could re-speak the words of their would be leaders], the project aimed to create a vehicle through which the residents of Denver could interrupt the transnational flow of media, by passing it through their own bodies.
-> NPR interview
video artifact: Mayor John Hickenlooper in Denver as Barack Obama in South Carolina