Performance : Glossolalie

Glossolalie is an audio and visual immersion in more than 40 languages (Tahitian, Hñañhu, Arawak, Gaulish, Saramaka, Iaai, Bislama, Croatian, Tamil, Totonac, Maya, Udmurt, Malaysian, etc.). It is an experience that allows us to perceive the deeply vibrational, sonic, and musical nature of language. During this immersive experience, the artist’s voice takes us on a sensory journey where sound serves as a gateway to meaning.

This performance is one manifestation of the “Glossolalie” project, launched in 2012, which comprises a constellation of multilingual and transmedia works (installations, drawings, books, sound pieces, videos, archives, language-creation workshops, apps for smartphones and tablets, etc.).

This narrative work is invented language by language and owes its very existence to this transition from one language to another. It exists only because it creates a space for writing that is also a threshold: the point where the unique nature of each language converges with that of the author at the moment of writing.

Thus, in Glossolalie, elements from a time before time coalesce—some narratives that seem to date back to the era of myths, others relating to historical periods—without, however, ever being based on recognizable real-world facts. Thus, in each linguistic fragment, there is something familiar that evokes constants of human history rather than attested facts—a choice rooted, moreover, in the conviction that historical fact is often (always?) written in the language of the victors, and that there is therefore every reason to question it... Glossolalie is thus rooted in a resolutely decolonial perspective.

Glossolalie aims to bring differences and otherness into coexistence and to construct a multifaceted whole from them. It seeks to conceive of and represent languages not as boundaries, but as what connects.

To date, more than 110 poems—some of which are still unpublished—have been written in these different languages:

obdorsk khanty, vakh khanty (Sibérie), ingush, tchétchène, batsbi, mansi du Nord, acholi, bandjalang, amarakaeri, aceh, cia-cia, zuanga, ket, burushaski (Pakistan), frison, bushinengee (Guyane), bambara (Afrique de l’ouest), arawak (Guyane), oudmourte (Oural), diné bizaad (navajo, Etats-Unis), mitchif (Québec), karakalpak (sud de la mer d’Aral), purepucha (Mexique), kartuli ena (géorgien), same (laponie), qikiktaaluq du sud (Canada), wolof (Afrique de l’ouest), arménien, japonais, hongrois, islandais, lingala (République du Congo), bulu (Cameroun), kwàkum (Cameroun), tahitien, indo-européen, chakhar (Mongolie), bijogo de Bubaque (archipel des Bijagos), turc, tagalog (Philippines), ombrien, dogon de Sanga (Mali), vili, ese’eja, achuar (Amazonie), hñäñho (Mexique), agni indenie (Côte d’Ivoire), rapa nui (Île de Pâques, gbe (Côte du Golfe du Bénin), tzeltal (Mexique), shimaoré (Comorres), manjak, pohnpei (Micronésie), amharique (Ethiopie), hwen iaai (langue kanak), dhaagung-wurrung (région de Melbourne), bislama (Vanuatu), mapuzungun (Chili), maltais, arop-lokep (Papouasie), mussau, tobati, sobei (Océanie), khowar (Pakistan), Shior (Sibérie), adyguéen (Adyguée), croate, tamoul ( Inde du Sud-Est), malais (Malaisie), malaisien, vietnamien, manadonais ( Sulawesi), sqip (albanais), saramaka (langue du marronnage en Guyane et au Suriname), maya, ngigua, totonaku, matlatzinca (langues du Mexique), neve’i (Vanuatu)…