Exploring Language
"Ice", a Ruhrtriennale 2005 production /
Photo: Ursula Kaufmann
"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language", so stated the Romanian philosopher Emile Cioran. But what are the particular challenges presented by this "inhabiting" in a region that is home to 170 nationalities and an estimated figure of more than 125 languages, all in day-to-day use?
Language facilitates experience and is in turn defined by experience. Language shapes and moulds experience. Language unites and divides. It is composed, debated, discussed, distorted, dreamt, heard, improvised, interpreted, performed, read, recited, rhymed, silenced, spoken, sung, thought, told, translated, woven, written.
Academics continue to debate whether there are 6,000 or 7,000 languages in the world. But there's no question that language is mankind's most important mode of communication. People's perceptions and thoughts are defined by their cultural and personal linguistic powers. Naming emotions, objects and concepts is in itself a creative act, necessary to call them into being. That which cannot be named cannot be conceptualised. And a reality that cannot be described cannot be understood, referred to or even thought about. The goal of the "Exploring Language" projects is to make unfamiliar and concealed realities and worlds accessible via language and languages.
Lullabies give shape to our first contact with the sounds of our language: one project involves performances of cradle songs from all over the world. A major international fairytale festival is devoted to the archaic roots of tales and stories along the rivers Ruhr, Emscher and Lippe. On a darker note, the European crime-novel festival "Murder on the Hellweg" dares to delve into the murky depths of people's thoughts and actions. Intellectual rigour and cutting-edge theories concerning fundamental existential and political issues are the focus of the high-calibre literature series entitled "More Light! - More Thoughts on the European Enlightenment".
Encompassing poetry recitals in public urban areas, the German-language Poetry Slam Championship, a literature competition and research projects on regional and new linguistic phenomena, the "Exploring Language" programme opens doors to new, inaccessible, forgotten, secret and unexplored worlds of thought. A feast for all the senses, in every variation, at all manner of locations real and surreal and, most importantly, hugely enjoyable!