featured in As Above, So Below

All tongues are moving, but we don’t hear them all

I grew up with my mother and the mother of my mother, whose mother tongue of Mandarin I could never entirely grasp. Growing up I realized sometimes care is visible through actions and invisible in words. Leaving the country of their native tongue, I could only witness the struggle of learning a new one. Being a witness to exclusion, when one is moving one’s tongue, but one’s words are moving nowhere. All tongues are moving, but we don’t hear them all is a time-specific sound piece. With material resembling skin in a metal pond transforming over time, ice is changed daily to melt. A sensor detects the water and together with hydrophones, the transformation of water enables sound. Decaying to create anew. Words on [something-that-is-not-supposed-to-be-put-into-words] is a publication to be found at the reading table. Together the publication and installation explore silence as a space for resistance when language politicizes and marginalizes. Language is meant to be relational: To form relation(s) to others, when words move from one body to another. But in that exchange of words, we tend to forget how language is political. Forgetting that the language we are taught is the one with political value. Is sound a more inclusive exchange? Inviting to listening when sound crosses borders and is created by relations within a space. Drawing from intersectional feminist theory and moving to philosophy of senses, the work explores how sound connects more inclusively, when words do not.