ENGLISHES, Nicoline van Harskamp’s first solo exhibition in Ireland, features five of the eight episodic films from her Englishes series (comprising interview, performance, and scripted fiction, exploring the myriad variations of English spoken between people as a link language), and PDGN, a video installation that puts forward a desirable (if unlikely) global link language for the future. This video work is subtitled with Irish subtitles which have been specially produced for this exhibition. In an accompanying video work, projected in the main foyer of Project, lines from the script for PDGN are being remade again and again in different possibilities and distortions. Englishes (2014–16) explores the widespread use and modification
of the English language by its non-native speakers, or ‘Englishes’.
Researched and produced in collaboration with a range of art institutions and universities, each video work engages a particular area of linguistics such as phonology, pragmatics or translation. Van Harskamp has worked together with, among others: language teachers, linguists, language inventors, multi-lingual children and actors in order to study and explore ‘Englishes’ and the particulars and conceptualisation of this transient type of language. Inspired by the fluid and dynamic nature that is fuelled by the intentional, deliberate and functional changes introduced by their speakers, the artist envisages the dissolution of English into varieties of future ‘Englishes’, a common and ever-growing linguistic resource.
Find out more by downloading our Englishes Gallery Guide here.
Artist talk and public conversation: 16 Feb, 7pm - 9pm, Studio 6 at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
Second public conversation: 21 Feb, 7.30pm - 9pm, Studio 6 Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
Relatively Speaking tour: 23 Feb, 1pm, starting at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
