Rewilding, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, April 13 - August 18, 2024
Inhabiting language / Wor(l)d histories
Words, words, words
Inhabiting Language is an attempt to make visible the process through which language comes to life, accompanies us and allows us to bring to our consciousness constructs of an ever evolving reality, shaping our identities.
Vocabularies emerge, are constructed, acknowledged, settle into our dictionaries, become part of our lives and eventually our histories. They will be tested, integrated, their meanings honed and redefined with skill and subtlety in an unforeseeable process. Some terms will remain as an etymological record, growing very deep roots and complex meanings. They establish a form of stability and confirm a sense of security, acting as constant points of reference.
Alternately they may lose their novelty, their presence, their durability, attraction, may be cast aside or gently fade away.
In this work I have identified clusters of words referencing
A
strictly the twenty first century;
new terminologies
these new vocabularies frequently appear as ACRONYMS, being close to the construct of DATA
They may be rooted in the context of new technologies, scientific developments, manifestations in the environment or society as a whole ( the pandemic, climate change, projections into the future )
COVID (Coronavirus Disease)
BLOG (Weblog: compressed, informal website)
ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan)
DEEPFAKE ( IA altered portrait / image )
B
terms with a long history yet still relevant in the present
many of these words may contain roots in their original languages ( greek and latin ) speaking to the past through cultural and historic transformations
RECONCILIATION (Canadian context: redefined First Nations relationships)
ENVIRONMENT (Climate change)
TRUTH/FAKE TRUTH (suggesting potential misinformation)
CELL (originally micro organism, now CELL PHONE)
Inhabiting Language draws attention to the interactive quality of words, interactive in the sense that they can come to live through an intense awareness of their power to shape our consciousness, our sense of being, our cognitive abilities. Language remains a central aspect of our identities, of any kind of knowledge structure, bridging every discipline and linking scientific research, philosophy, ideology, religion, culture and the arts. With this work I would like to present the notion that we intensify our awareness that language is a rich resource available to us which we can continue to develop as a creative act, with insight, deepened knowledge, responsibility and a striving for the acknowledgement of human qualities in a cautionary assertion of the developing field of artificial intelligence.