The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) invites you to the launch of Tyler Coburn’s book "Some Monologues", a publication that gathers fifteen years of the artist’s scripts ("Wendy’s Subway", 2025). The event will take place on January 28 at 6:30 PM at the LCCA Library, Alberta Street 13, Riga.
On this occasion, Coburn presents a new monologue entitled "People", which draws influence from "A Personal History of American Theatre" (1980), a one-person performance by the American actor and writer Spalding Gray (1941–2004).
Moving through a set of index cards bearing the names of plays he acted in, Gray told stories related to those productions, dwelling on events unfolding behind the scenes. As the order of the index cards was random, no two performances were ever the same. In Coburn’s version, each of his cards indicates the name of a person who has a role in the book: an academic he interviewed for a project, an amorous attendee of one of his monologues, his collaborator Susan Bennett (the original voice actress of Siri), a data center employee who insulted him, and more. "People" brings focus to Coburn's many collaborators and the monologues they helped create.
After performing "People", Coburn is joined in conversation by LCCA curator Andra Silapētere.
About the book
Working at the nexus of performance, art writing, and fiction, Tyler Coburn creates monologues that explore how the “I” is marked in speech. His myriad topics—alternate history, legal personhood, digital labor, and resonant frequency, to name a few—defy straightforward modes of presentation, often insisting on site-specificity and social intimacy at the expense of conventional documentation.
"Some Monologues" collects, for the first time, the scripts of Coburn’s work from the past fifteen years, many of which have not previously been published. Accompanying them are texts by eleven artists, writers, curators, and scholars who experienced these performances firsthand, collaborated in their making, conversed with the artist about them, or share an interest in the subjects they engage. Written in theoretical, poetic, and autobiographical registers, these contributions offer new perspectives on the monologue as an expansive and relational form.
About the author
Tyler Coburn is an artist, writer, and professor based in New York. He received a 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and his writing has appeared in ArtReview, BOMB, C Magazine, Dis, e-flux Journal, frieze, LEAP, Metropolis M, Mousse, and Rhizome. Coburn is the author of four books: "I’m that angel" (self-published, 2012), "Robots Building Robots" (CCA Glasgow, 2013), "Richard Roe" (Sternberg, 2019), and "Solitary" (Sternberg and Art Sonje Center, 2022). He has presented artwork at such venues as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Bergen Kunsthall; Hayward Gallery, London; Para Site, Hong Kong; and Kunstverein Munich.
About the speaker
Andra Silapētere is a curator and researcher at the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA) in Riga. Silapētere’s exhibitions and programs have been presented at the Latvian National Museum of Art and Riga Art Space in Riga; Kunsthalle Praha in Prague; Pickle Bar and District in Berlin; the James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, in New York; Den Frie in Copenhagen; PUBLICS in Helsinki. In 2022 she co-curated the Latvian Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale with the artist duo Skuja Braden. Since 2016 Silapētere has also been curating and managing the LCCA Summer School programs. She is at work on a book titled "Portable Landscapes: Latvian Exile Art Histories".