The Temporary Programme, Approaching Language, investigates language as matter that shapes and determines ways of thinking, ruling our everyday life, from the personal to intricate socio-political, and ethical structures.
Approaching Language asks what forms of materialisation language can take and where they can be situated, if at all. How do you approach language, and how does language approach you?
How does a consciousness of language as matter, in all its variations, appear in current artistic practices? What is the operative force of an artistic practice steeped in language?
Approaching Language shares the concerns voiced by the French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray in the 1980s: "If we continue to speak the same language to each other, we will reproduce the same story. Begin the same stories all over again." The programme rethinks the traditional relationship between words and things; between practice and theory; the visible and the invisible. Special attention is given to poetry as an act that resists reigning regimes but runs the risk of being absorbed by these same – economic, political, cultural, ethical – structures. Authors and artists such as Anne Carson, Carlos Amorales, Camille Henrot and Nora Turato have demonstrated as much.