ancestral tongues
with anise
136 GOETHE LAB residency, Goethe-Institut Singapur, 2024
經 ANCESTRAL TONGUES is a multiverse research project recovering ancestral vocal memory using collaborative methodologies in archiving, transmodal scoring and collective performance. Holding space for the reparation of our fractured relationship with Chinese languages (“dialects”) within the space of 136 GOETHE LAB, the project manifests as experiments culminating in a set of embodied scores for a citizen choir and building mutuality around disappearing aural lineages.
The erasure of these languages, catalysed by the Speak Mandarin Campaign launched in 1979, seems inevitable as Singapore continually positions itself towards the anglicised world. Yet, what memory is held in the tongues of living descendants? The word 經 holds the meanings of thread, chant, and experience/history. Attuning to emergent and inherited intonations and phonemes, 經 ANCESTRAL TONGUES will be an active site for processing and patching together our language histories and ancestral memory.
More documentation here
136 GOETHE LAB residency, Goethe-Institut Singapur, 2024
經 ANCESTRAL TONGUES is a multiverse research project recovering ancestral vocal memory using collaborative methodologies in archiving, transmodal scoring and collective performance. Holding space for the reparation of our fractured relationship with Chinese languages (“dialects”) within the space of 136 GOETHE LAB, the project manifests as experiments culminating in a set of embodied scores for a citizen choir and building mutuality around disappearing aural lineages.
The erasure of these languages, catalysed by the Speak Mandarin Campaign launched in 1979, seems inevitable as Singapore continually positions itself towards the anglicised world. Yet, what memory is held in the tongues of living descendants? The word 經 holds the meanings of thread, chant, and experience/history. Attuning to emergent and inherited intonations and phonemes, 經 ANCESTRAL TONGUES will be an active site for processing and patching together our language histories and ancestral memory.
More documentation here
Image by third street studio
Image by third street studio
Image by Jeremy Ho