"Lullabye to Language" originates from a double encounter.
As part of our on-going project "common infra/ctions", researching into minor languages, non-communicative poetic strategies and possible ways of collectively unlearning codified, hegemonic speech-acts (of the kind that are instrumental in oppressive power relations), we were invited to collaborate with the International Mother Language Day in Aubervilliers (Paris).
The festival is celebrated each year to commemorate the students who were shot dead by police in Dhaka as they demonstrated for official recognition of the Bengali language. The main theme that year was the lullaby, those slender, trembling threads of melody that quieten language and bed it down in the voice’s hollows. During the day, we had the opportunity to encounter and record a number of people singing their lullabies in different languages (all spoken in Aubervilliers) - including Bengali, Fon, Khassonke, Lingala, Comorian, Fula, Soninke, Yoruba, Arabic, Korean, Mandarin, Tamil, Spanish, Chinese, Berber…
Around the same time we came across Jean-Luc Nancy’s beguiling text, "Tombe de sommeil" ("The Fall of Sleep").
"Lullabye to Language" draws upon several of the field recordings we made, together with passages taken from the chapter "Berceuse" (Lullaby) of Nancy’s text, dwelling in a zone where lullabies in numerous tongues emerge from a multilayered soundscape of sleep-related musics, electronic textures and field recordings to hopefully give language itself the chance to fall asleep.
Graeme Thomson & Silvia Maglioni
Sound mix and voice: Graeme Thomson
Field recordings: Thomas Bauer, Silvia Maglioni
Text: Jean-Luc Nancy
Special thanks to: All the lullaby singers and the musicians whose work we have borrowed to accompany them into the night.
