THE MUTE SHALL SPEAK
The Mute Shall Speak is the title of an ongoing series of investigations taking place in the disused Royal National Throat, Nose and Ear Hospital in London. Founded in 1874, the building functioned as a specialist hospital until its closure in 2019.
In 2020, the artist, along with over one hundred others, moved into the building under a property guardianship scheme. In this arrangement, a private company is contracted by the building's owner to protect the property by renting out any habitable rooms to so-called “guardians.” These tenancies are temporary by nature: the building is typically sold, repurposed, or demolished at an undetermined point in the future.
Those drawn to this form of precarious living are often seeking an alternative from the increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible city.
Since moving into the guardianship, Beck has initiated and collaborated on multiple projects set within the hospital. Working across photography, video, sculpture, and frottage, his multifaceted approach stems from a sustained curiosity. One concerned as much with what it feels like to inhabit the space as with documenting the building itself.
An overview of the building is deliberately withheld. To map it clearly would shatter the otherworldly occurrences that unfold across the works. Instead, fragments, glimpses and monuments are offered. The hospital becomes a stage for these moments to float and accumulate into a language of imagined potentials.
Running through the investigations is a persistent thread: gentrification and the erasure of public space. In reactivating a site marked for removal, The Mute Shall Speak questions the logic of endless redevelopment and asks what is left behind?