Mimeglish or How To Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still
Mimeglish or How To Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still is an interactive multi-media installation that investigates methodology for meaning-making though sensorial exploration of language and process of signification.
Language is not an abstract, arbitrary system of signs but a reciprocal, continuous relationship with the land that surrounds us, the bodies that we feel with, and the human and more-than-human community that we engage with. As an immigrant, I have been on a continuous search to find ways to communicate and navigate the changing community and environment, old and new. That constant search for ways of connecting has brought me to my current practice, which explores communication and language. The work proposes a methodology for meaning-making through broader linguistic definitions, acute attention and embodied empathetic experiences.
How to spot a meaning?
Once found, how to communicate with it?
And how to share the knowledge acquired?
The possible answer investigates language as an interrelation between the visual, auditory and mental concepts. It explores how the connections between the landscape as a space of limitless possibilities of engagement, sound, and an embodied and attuned sensorial experience assist in meaning-making. Finally, the work suggests a methodology for meaning-making through broader linguistic propositions, attuned attention to the sonic and visual stimuli around us and a more expansive definition of a community, extended to the more-than-human participants in the meaning-seeking interrelationships.
The piece speaks to the language mutation though seemingly mute objects, whose linguistic stiffness and historically implicated materials partially influence how we communicate and think today. Partly, because the sensuous language prevails, it seeps through the rigid linguistic structures we create while gently directing us toward a more empathic connection. Lastly, the installation questions the knowledge preservation methodologies in the absence of a physical object. The installation becomes not about objects in space but the methods of communication offered for a more attuned perception of the meanings residing there.
Mimeglish or How to Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still, installation; detail; 2022, pastel pencil, spatial interactive audio, sand, wood, minerals, wood, PLA, clay, minerals, plaster, bronze
Mimeglish or How to Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still, instalaltion; digital video stills, 2022