M/Other Tongue

23.01 – 28. 02/ 2015
Tenderpixel, London

“I have but one language — yet that language is not mine”, wrote Jacques Derrida in what is supposed to be an autobiographical essay, reflecting on the loss of one’s mother tongue as a consequence of colonialism in Algeria. But in what language does one write memoirs when there is no mother tongue? Whatever language we speak, and no matter how proficiently we master that language, the truth is we never quite own it. Language is an implant as much as it is a product of discipline and domestication. It is a foreign body within one’s own body. “I have but one language — yet that language is not mine”. Departing from this paradox, this exhibition is meant to be experienced as a passage between languages. A proliferation of voices whose identity remains in question. Some of them appear to be thrown into absolute translation. Others provide a line of flight from native culture and the politics of cultural belonging. Away from national identity and its dominant linguistic forms. A line of flight from the authority of the mother tongue. This exhibition wants to be a place from which to conjure up those voices that sound the most alien to us, not because they belong to another language, but because they are foreigners in their own language and so they make ours foreign to us.

Artists: Anna Barham, Olivier Castel, Iñaki Garmendia, Mónica Restrepo, Katarina Zdjelar
Curated by: Sabel Gavaldon

Events
Thursday 22 January, 7 to 9pm
Private View

Saturday, 24 January, 6 to 8pm
Gauaz parke batean (In the Park at Night…)
Performative lecture by Iñaki Garmendia in collaboration with Itziar Bilbao Urrutia

Saturday, 31 January, 6 to 8pm
Reading by Olivier Castel followed by Skype conversation with Mónica Restrepo

Saturday, 14 February, 3 to 4pm
Guided tour by the curator, Sabel Gavaldon

Saturday, 28 February, 6 to 8pm
Anna Barham: Production reading group

Thursday, 5 March, 7 to 9pm
Showing continually 6 and 7 March 2015, 2 to 6pm
Social Choreography – an Ecology of Collective Experience
Screening programme with Julie Born Schwartz, Priscila Fernandes, Adelita Husni-Bey, Rosalind Nashashibi, Katarina Zdjelar