The poetry of combined language(s)

This piece talks about the language soundscapes of the mind. In particular, the Mindscape of our two minds.

We have written two pieces of automatic writing: the surrealists used it to loosen the boundaries between subconscious and conscious mind. To get in the state of relaxation and focus on the mental landscape, we have written them after meditation. Different languages of thought coexist in us: English and our native tongues Catalan, Spanish and Icelandic. To recreate our thoughts as they are, we recorded our pieces in each language that inhabits ourselves.

Juxtaposing sentences from both pieces, we wrote a Surreal Poem, with all our languages sounding together.

Coming from four different countries, we were interested in exploring how language derives from the need to define meanings, and how language in turn affects the interpretation of a meaning itself. This notion was explored through repeatedly translating a text between our mother tongues, until its meaning became obscure. After some initial experiments, we used an Italian poem by Nicola Coppola which was translated consecutively by each of us to our own language, then to English using Google translate, and so on. We visualised these different interpretations (artificial/our own) using video, distorting the words, voices and images in a literal way to reflect the alteration of the text’s meaning.

Initial experiments (Word 40KB).

Somewhere in the flyway is a hand-bound book that presents an instinctive dialogue between two artists, sparking from a collective archive of photographs taken of either a) an object, souvenir or b) a fleeting moment captured through the window of a car, bus, train. These fragments of the land reflect an exchange of memories that only exist in each respective language, attached to the time and place, untranslatable. In turn, an abstract space is created from the absurd mix - where there is true freedom in drifting along the flyway.

Madina Masimova is a Spatial Designer, Artist and Creator. Her practice focuses on creating and designing spaces and environments in the conjunction of technology, art, and science. She has great interest in outer space design.

Yulin Huang (she/her) studies MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and is intrigued by the concept of memory vs. documentation. She is Taiwanese/Kiwi and speaks English and Mandarin.

Claudia Sambo has recently completed an MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. Her practice engages with failure and the futility of effort. Through language she explores the fallibility of communication and the unintentionally poetic.

Ona Telos (the artist name of Tanya Hlavatskykh/Glavatskix) is a recent MA Fine Art graduate at Chelsea. Her works explore information and art philosophy. She grew up in a bilingual Ukrainian-Russian family and speaks five languages.

Jack is a performance student at Wimbledon, a passionate storyteller, enjoying books from all over. Though not fluent, he finds fragments of different languages and frequently makes up his own.