Voicings is a video installation shot using texts by refugees from an English language class with whom I explored instances when language instead of being the interface for our everyday interactions becomes a barrier that creates alienation.  

Their testimonies are performed by white British actors trained in received pronunciation; their instructions are to learn the texts including their syntactical errors but enunciate them in clear RP English. The actors are filmed at home as they learn the scripts and have one hour to do so, i.e. the duration of the camera tape. 

Voicings exposes the oppressive violence hidden in everyday speech when a person is at times forced (as in the case of political refugees or economic migrants) to exist in a new language and culture: foreign speech is not naturally embodied.

The written testimonies and live performance to camera feature two sets of people who never meet: to protest against the sensationalism in contemporary media, I choose not to film the vulnerable subject but the privileged subject instead. As the actor must convey the text in a convincing manner the performances result in an authentic discomfort, echoing the difficulty of the language learner. Socio-political issues are at stake in Voicings, as well as the theoretical question of the distinction between speaking subject and the subject of speech. I wrote about Voicings in my PhD work:  MUVE (Museum of Ventriloquial Objects): Reconfiguring Voice Agency in the Liminality between the Verbal and the Vocal. (UCL, 2011).  Another critical work on Voicings is:  Productive Ambiguities, Bodies, Mistakes, and Voices in Laura Malacart’s Vocings, (2015) by Karin Anzivino, Research Master in Cultural Analysis, UVA, Amsterdam.

Watch Voicings: https://vimeo.com/76365555

Voicings’ methodology was applied to a distinct project in Italy about the socio-linguistics of an area where more than 50% of the children born were from outside Europe. The outcomes is a 30’ sound-work for Radio Papesse in Florence.