"HEY" IS A FORM OF GREETING IN 786 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. It's a multipurpose syllable that expresses surprise, exultation or interrogation. It can be used as a greeting, as a meaningless beat marker in music, a goodbye, a protest or a reprimand, as in, Hey! Stop that! Glossolalia, or "speaking in tongues," refers to the babble of children, schizophrenics and idiot savants. Hey! Why not? This weekend, Creative Time, proponent of the avant-garde and the interactive, launches Hey Hey Glossolalia, a month-long exhibition of speech and the voice as art forms.

Saturday afternoon Robert King Wilkerson - a member of the Black Panther Party who spent 29 years in solitary confinement in Angola Prison - will discuss the use of speech under the pressure of complete isolation in The Righteous Voice, at The New Museum. This presentation was developed with Rigo 23, a longtime collaborator of Wilkerson's, who will present a video documentary about the use language in his art to broaden awareness of figures like Wilkerson, and how ideas about language relate to ideas about truth.

Images, left to right: From Righteous Voice by Robert King Wilkerson and Rigo 23 at The New Museum Theater; from Cinema in the Round, by Mark Lecke, at the Guggenheim Museum; from Chris Evans: Cop Talk, at Pratt Institute. Courtesy of The New Museum.

And that's just the beginning. The series continues with performances and lectures all around town, from Judson Memorial Church to the Guggenheim Museum. It includes sound and noise art as well as verbal interactions. For example, in Chris Evans' Cop Talk, to take place at Pratt Institute, the artist arranges recruitment sessions by police departments for art students - suggesting the need for artist representation in the police force while simultaneously exposing students to an alternate career.

Robert King Wilkerson and Rigo 23 will appear at The New Museum Theater, Saturday May 3, 3:00 pm. Free with museum admission, but tickets, available online for this and all events in the series, are required.

WHILE YOU'RE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, check out the Lehmann Maupin presentation of Dave McKenzie in Private Dancer. The public is invited to join McKenzie in an afternoon of soundless dance on the closing day of the exhibition, You & Me, Sometimes. When the Brooklyn-based artist performed a version of this piece at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Romi Crawford, the director of education and public programs, spoke of the air of uncertainty created by his silent dance party: "Who's going to walk into the room? Are they going to get it? Are they going to care to dance?" For McKenzie, however, people who choose not to interact with him are as much a part of the work as those who do. Hey! It's your turn. Saturday, May 3, noon to 6:00 pm at Lehmann Maupin, 201 Christie Street, New York, NY.