The deadline for submission of this text is today - Monday 28th July 2008. This is a day after the final screening of Susan Hiller’s recent film "The Last Silent Movie" at Matt’s Gallery, in East London. Your opportunity to see this film, in this context, has been lost.
The film is composed of audio-archive fragments of 25 extinct, dead or endangered languages from across the planet. The screen is black aside for white subtitles translating the spoken words.
The Klallam language (nəxʷsƛ̕ay̕əmúcən), spoken until 1975, is one language in a large family of Native American languages called Salishan or Salish languages that have been spoken in what is now Washington, British Columbia, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana and is present in "The Last Silent Movie".
Moved to temporary speechlessness after experiencing this work, I offer a new word:
squarch’eath / n. the destruction or erasure of a culture as a result of the dominance (esp. economically, militarily, religiously, linguistically) of another culture(s) (esp. in relation to globalization) [ 21 c. constructed word, Klallam, skʷáči anglicized as squarchee , world, universe + English death]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment