The artist exhibits in two locations of Ca ‘Foscari a project that denounces the extinction of languages: one disappears every two weeks. Installation with virtual reality
Visors and headphones, to observe and listen, one last time. To immerse yourself in a listening experience that will soon fade into silence. To witness a mass extinction process, that of languages. Every two weeks the world loses a language, we use about thirty of the seven thousand in existence, of which at least half will be lost by the end of the century, if not sooner. This is why the artist Lena Herzog wanted us to hear those last whispers. She has realized Last Whispers, which arrives for the first time in Italy: in Venice, Ca ‘Foscari. A virtual reality installation (at the Zattere) and a project site specific (in the central courtyard of the university) which are a monument to the endangered variety of human communication. The painful song of a collapsing universe. And she loses her voices.
Two locations, two paths to understand (and appreciate) Last Whispers: Immersive Oratorio for Vanishing Voices, Collapsing Universes and a Falling Tree, work of the American artist of Russian origins promoted by Unesco and curated by Silvia Burini, Maria Gatti Racah, Giulia Gelmi, Anastasia Kozachenko-Stravinsky (Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of the Ca ‘Foscari University). Start point: the incredible speed – greater than that of the extinction of some species – with which we are losing our linguistic diversity. Alle Zattere (until 30 July; admission free) Lena Herzog has created a sound composition that combines speeches, songs, spells and ritual chants with sounds and images of nature and frequencies from space.
Just take a seat and wear headsets and headsets when traveling half an hour long in which (with the support of the Jim & Marilyn Simons Foundation) Herzog selected and put together recordings from theEndangered Languages Documentation Programme of the Soas University of London (now kept at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities), by the Smithsonian Institution, by the project Rosetta and over a dozen of the largest linguistic archives.
Lost sounds and others in danger (about forty from 27 countries those heard in the video), such as the ecosystem. Each language – comments the artist – a world, and with my team I wanted to fill the world with other worlds, create a landscape where visitors can experience languages that have disappeared or doomed to disappear. Meaning: As we drown in the noise of our voices – an expression of the dominant cultural and linguistic systems – we are surrounded by a boundless ocean of silence.
Global urgency, sociological, philosophical, aesthetic, human, because language – continues Herzog – how we think, how we place ourselves with respect to life, is our first creative act. This is where it all begins. The fact that so many founding acts disappear becomes an emergency. This can be understood by observing the large panels placed in the central courtyard of Ca ‘Foscari: hundreds of languages cataloged on the basis of their state of health and the number of living people who still speak them (until 30 September; admission free).
There is Susuami, spoken by ten people in Papua New Guinea (classification: Critically endangered, very endangered). There is the Garrwa of the Australian Aborigines (forty speakers, Severely endangered). The Panobo, extinct in Peru. Macuna, from Brazil (32 speakers: Vulnerable). There are also languages that are much more widespread, but still in danger. Like Yiddish with three million people who speak it but Definitely endangered. Like Emilia-Romagna, which is considered a single language in the Unesco ranking: two million speakers.
Technology, critical conscience, multimedia, ethics. The project by Lena Herzog, who was born as a photographer and in her poetics tackles the themes of rituality, loss, dislocation with an approach that combines science and art, also includes a third stage, also in Venice: an audiovisual projection of her work , on the big screen, will be presented in the central courtyard of Ca ‘Foscari as the main event of the edition of Art Night 2022, which will be held on 18 June.
Silent Extinctions and How to Avoid Them. The UN General Assembly and Unesco have declared 2022-2032 International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
May 13, 2022 (change May 13, 2022 | 22:13)
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