Klang der Sprachen 2008/2023

How does one’s own mother tongue sound without the meanings of the words? To be able to really perceive the pure sound of one’s own mother tongue is almost impossible - because as soon as we understand the meaning of the words, their meaning comes to the fore. Content and sound seem to be inseparatable. But what remains of language without the context of its words?

For Sound of Language, Mariateresa Sartori reworks the words of a language semantically and makes them unrecognizable, but the rhythm, melody, and word length retain. Her method: consonants are shifted either within the individual word or between adjacent words, making both individual words and sentences appear meaningless. What remains is something completely incomprehensible and yet absurdly familiar.

Everything you will hear is absolutely meaningless.

As part of the collaboration with Habibi Kiosk, three languages have been added to the Archive of The Sound of the Language. Alina Kostiukova, Jelena Kuljić and Ceren Oran will perform them live as part of the installation. Afterwards, Gina Penzkofer will moderate an artist talk with the participants.

The work was realized thanks to the contribution of Galleria Michela Rizzo (Venice) and acquired by the Museum of the Querini Stampalia Foundation, where it can be heard as individual audio books in the Dictionary Room of the Library. In cooperation with the Habibi Kiosk of the Munich Kammerspiele, The Sound of the Language was supplemented with Serbian, Ukrainian and Turkish.

With a warm thanks to Edoardo Aruta, in collaboration with Cinema Galleggiante https://www.cinemagalleggiante.it/