Installation in a metro station
Baracaldo, Spain

The current project bases on the parent project „wortort“. Once again, the spoken language and it`s phonetic sound is in focus of my examination.
In „wortort“ I mainly dealt with my own verbal language (german) and its dialects, as well as with the question, which denotations just one word could contain.
Now I expand my reference frame to all languages in my proximate surroundings - and these, due to globalisation, are many.
I filtered out phonemes that exist in at least two languages, but respectively, have a different acceptation within. This phonemes I use to switch between the languages. A pivot is the similarity and confusability of phonetical sounds of words - or the combination of words - in an interlingual context.
Center of the project is language itself; in a manner of speaking, it is discussing itself out of different forms of appearance. The single verbal contributions – in various languages – refer to the question, how to deal with a babylonic diversity of language, how to make it possible to understand each other.

The project is realised with a space installation in a metro station in Baracaldo. It contains an auditive as well as a visual level.
In a phase of investigation the named phonemes were collected on tape and paper in the relative language and lettering, including an english translation.

This material is incorporated in a debate on verbal comprehension, in changing languages. According to the theme, short associative statements, in different languages, were developed and assembled in a poetical manner.
The debate starts with a spanish statement. At the point, a named phoneme appears, the communication switches to the related language. After repetition of this phoneme - now with another acceptance – the communication continues in this language until another specific phoneme appears and the debate switches to a further language, and so on.
Each sentence is spoken on tape by a native speaker of the related language and these recordings are assembled in an audio collage. One language passes its statement on to the other. The result is distributed to five loudspeakers placed in the room as invisible as possible. The sound starts as soon as a visitor enters.
Because the hearing of the collected sentences, respectivly statements alone will not allow the recipient to understand the content, the heard is accompanied by a visual, written level.
The individual sentences are fixed on the walls, according to their appearance, and in the lettering of the cultural area they origin from. To visualise the phonetic, all statements also are escorted by the international phonetic alphabet.
To make the entire content of the whole debate comprehensible for an audience, the spoken sentences also appear as an english translation on the walls.