Multilingual Spaces

“Writing: an imprint of the body on wet sand,” noted Lebanese painter and poet Etel Adnan on the role of language, time, and speed in thinking and dreaming. In a dream in her collection of stories Mutterzunge, Emine Sevgi Özdamar asks a friend how depth can be conveyed. “Kaza geçirmek,” he replies—experiencing accidents in life. The German-Turkish writer, actress, and director refers to the boneless tongue that turns to where it is linguistically and phonetically located. Decolonization processes also often involve language(s). Becoming homeless in a dominant language and its anthropophagic appropriation could describe a way of dealing with hegemonic languages, according to cultural worker and educator Rubia Salgado. As with Salgado, artistic research often moves between linguistic spaces—between those of theory, mediation, and art practices—and multiplies the ways of understanding.

Spaces of multilingualism unfold in overlaps of the spoken, written, heard, and read. In this collaborative seminar, we will deal with multilingual oral and written transmissions, with translations, sound recordings, and embodiments of different languages of art and literature. These create openings that challenge the supposed singularity of a language by unfolding not only concepts but also what they seek to grasp. This gives rise to unique rhythms, tonalities, and physical techniques.

Readings:

Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Mutterzunge, Erzählungen, Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2022.

Haytham El Wardany, How to Disappear, Berlin: Sternberg, 2018 (vergriffen). 

Adel Karasholi, Umarmung der Meridiane, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1978.

Birgit Mennel/Stefan Nowotny (Hg.), The languages of  the „Banlieues“, in: 2013,

https://transversal.at/transversal/0513/nowotny-mennel/en (02.06.2025).

Rubia Salgado, “Multilingual But Monolingual. Claims and Contradicitons in the Practice of Pedagogy within Adult Education in the Field of German as a Second Language”, in: 2013, https://transversal.at/transversal/0613/salgado/en (02.06.2025).

Texte zur Kunst, No. 108 (2017), Idiom – Languages of Art

Etel Adnan, Jahreszeiten. Schrift und Bilder, Hamburg 2008.