People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time

People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time is part of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing and is presented at 95 Horatio Street, on the facade of the building across the street from the Whitney and the south end of the High Line.

The collective People Who Stutter Create (PWSC) contends that stuttering (also called stammering) can create room for deep listening and collaboration. Through repeated sounds, prolonged sounds, and blocks with no sound, the group aims to describe social reality while also being able to change it through the act of description. For its first project, PWSC mobilizes the Whitney’s exhibition billboard as a place to publicly celebrate the transformational space of dysfluency, a term that can encompass stuttering/stammering and other communication differences such as aphasia, Tourette’s, and dysarthria.

PWSC comprises five artists who stutter/stammer: Born in China, Jia Bin is a US-based doctoral student in communication sciences and disorders. With a deep commitment to empowerment and inclusion, Bin envisions innovative projects to spotlight the beauty and power of stuttered speech, fostering a more supportive world for those who stutter in any language. Delicia Daniels is a poet and activist. An assistant professor of creative writing, her debut poetry collection, The Language We Cry In, was published in 2017. JJJJJerome Ellis is a multi-hyphenate artist. Through music, text, performance, video, and photography, they research relationships among Blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. Conor Foran is a London-based Irish creative practitioner. Through his Dysfluent practice, he considers how stammering intersects with creativity and how art and design can instigate social change. Kristel Kubart is a speech-language pathologist who stutters and has cerebral palsy. She works with children, teens, and adults who stutter, and helps them embrace their stuttering, stutter more freely, and learn to trust their voice.

Concept/Creative Lead: JJJJJerome Ellis
Design: Conor Foran
Text: Jia Bin, Delicia Daniels, JJJJJerome Ellis, Conor Foran, Kristel Kubart
Translations: Angelica Bernabe, Jia Bin, James Harrison Monaco, Argenis Ovalles, Wendy Palomeque
Typography consultant: Zoe (Yu) Cui
Typefaces: Dysfluent Mono by Conor Foran and Glow Sans TC by Celestial Phineas

This work is part of a series of public art installations organized by the Whitney in partnership with TF Cornerstone and High Line Art.

People Who Stutter Create: Stuttering Can Create Time is part of Outside the Box programming, which is supported by a generous endowment from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation.