Words Words Words Are Decorative Sounds
Still from Video Full HD, 7’43”, 2020
Still from Video Full HD, 7’43”, 2020
The video investigates the complex relationship between language and cultural identity in our contemporary times. Instead of considering languages as simple communication tools, here they become viruses able to contaminate each other shaping new identities and geographies.
The starting point of the video is a fragmented narration of an anecdotic story: an intimate adolescent memory of learning English. This memory is playfully filtered through references to the mainstream visual culture of the late 80s and 90s. The video work describes the process of shaping new forms of the self through the use of language. Words, memories and images merge with artificial landscapes, created and filmed in a marine engineering studio, and flow in vague yet coherent sequences that feel as natural and unsettling as a dream.
Still from Video Full HD, 7’43”, 2020
Still from Video Full HD, 7’43”, 2020
Exhibition view, Altrove e altri canti, 2021, Galleria Tiziana di Caro, photo: Danilo Donzelli
Pouring words in your mouth, lightbox, duratrans print, metal frame
Exhibition view, Altrove e altri canti, 2021, Galleria Tiziana di Caro, photo: Danilo Donzelli
Exhibition view, Altrove e altri canti, 2021, Galleria Tiziana di Caro, photo: Danilo Donzelli
Within the first breath, photography, c-print on dibond
Doodled words, photography, c-print on dibond
Words, words, words are decorative sound, ink on photographic paperWords Words Words Are Decorative Sounds
TextMy English is an illness that I caught in my late adolescence.
An assembled language, reconstructed from song titles and lyrics that are glued together in order to form a mnemonic collage.
Words are decorative sounds more than they are traps to capture and organise meanings.
Words, words, words are decorative sounds…
Imagination bridges gaps in understanding, while fantasising about a word can reveal different perspectives about it.
Lullaby is definitely one of my favourite English words.
L-U-L-L-A-B-Y
I am always happy whenever I can use the word lullaby in a discussion.
I recall all times that I have casually used the word lullaby.
There have been 16 of them.
I also like very much:
M-O-O-N
CAR-CASS
TOUR-NI-QUET
ANITHING
If a language is born in a precise geographical location
There comes a moment in which geography is transformed into history.
Tristan de Cunha is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, 2,400 km from the nearest continental landmass.
The first settlers on the island were sailors who came from Scotland, England, the Netherlands, the United States and Italy. Until today, the population has maintained the surnames of the founding fathers of the community. The language spoken on the island is the result of a complex crossbreeding of linguistic viruses from which the authenticity of the original English language has irremediably fallen ill.
Apparently, my English embraces the most common grammatical errors that are part of the dialect spoken on the island.
In some hidden nook of my discourse, various vague images of that land are evoked by my language.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.
Within the first breath of a word a new geography starts.