A case of tongues

I love the rhythm of the exchange between the anthropologist and the Chidigo speaker in the first section of this recording, and at first I thought about building a percussion piece around it. But I chose this piece to work with because of my deep interest in languages, especially marginalised ones, so I decided to work with words in the tradition of the Pitt Rivers collection, which brings together objects related by theme or function rather than place or time. 

I chose some words in the recording that have resonance for me and asked four friends to record them in their native tongues: Hanna Komar in Belorussian, Krysia Osostowicz in Polish, Darius Paymai in Farsi and Krithika Varagur in Tamil. 

I used those words as a kind of embroidery on the rough cloth of the field recording, interrupting, counterpointing, enhancing. The 2,000-year-old Tamil poem, "What He Said," is read by Krithika and in A.K. Ramanujan's English translation by Hanna. Languages, too, can mingle "like red earth and pouring rain".

Researcher discussing vocabulary and translations of various English words reimagined by Maria Margaronis.

———
Part of the project A Century of Sounds, reimagining 100 sounds covering 100 years from the collections of the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. Explore the full project at citiesandmemory.com/century-sounds