Girl Talk and Hold Music: On the Sculptural Poetics of Chat

In its persistent indirections, its tendency to both shape and ornament social space, gossip (chatting, girl talk) can be sculptural. Sometimes, coalescing around a particular figure, a Harvey Weinstein or a David France, the power of this chatter becomes partially institutionally “visible,” although often it recedes from display. Works by Carolyn Lazard, Wu Tsang, Jessica Vaughn, and Hannah Black make use of the sculptural power of chat, and its specific evasion of a certain mode of political speech.