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Verbuchstabieren Trilogy - I. One World, One Dream
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2018
4k video, 1-channel, color, sound, 00:11:09
This work seeks to explore linguistic and cultural issues in
cross-cultural communication under the oppression of the encroachment of the
dominant language and culture. The artist has created a virtual world called
MONDO, which consists of some well-known attractions of the world, through
which the cultures of different countries are also represented.
In MONDO, "Civitano" (Esperanto for: citizens of the
world) can live wherever they are interested and communicate with each other.
The "Civitano" represents his or her country of origin and his or her
cultural labels, such as history, culture, language, etc. The first task is to
build the "Tower of Babel". In order to build efficiently, all
"Civitano" can only use one language, "Esperanto". The use
of Esperanto as the "primary language" in the work was accompanied by
a consideration of its cultural legitimacy. The meaning of Esperanto in Chinese
is directly translated as: the language of the world. Ironically, however, the
grammatical rules of Esperanto are derived from Indo-European languages. In
Esperanto, there is almost no trace of Asian languages, let alone Chinese. The
work also uses the artist's native language, Chinese, the language of her
residence, German, and the current "dominant" language of the world,
English. These four languages form a " frame " on four sides of the
screen, suggesting that language differences limit intercultural
communication.
The work is based on the game the Sims. In the game the Sims,
the game company embedded their own language, Simlish, which was not fully
developed, and the content of the trilogy is highly compatible with the game
itself because of this setting.
This
work as the first part of the trilogy provides the basic context and background,
while the work itself serves as a form of irony, questioning some of the
linguistic problems of current transnational intercultural migration, and even
of globalization.