L’ISOLA
In collaboration with Palazzo Magnani Foundation and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
According to the mapping carried out by UNESCO in 2010 for the Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, 250 languages have disappeared in the last fifty years and 3,000 are currently in danger. A language dies taking with it a precise knowledge of the environment it has named for centuries. Together with a language, a conception and a vision of the world disappear forever.
Through a sound-based work (available in Piazza Martiri del 7 luglio, every weekend from 11am to 1pm) and a multi-channel audio-video installation, Anush Hamzehian and Vittorio Mortarotti present their project L’Isola (The Island), which aims at collecting the last images and sounds, the last glimmers of a disappearing community.
Yonaguni is a small piece of land far from everything and beaten by the strongest currents of the Pacific Ocean. A thousand people live on the island, few of whom still speak dunan. Dunan is a Severely Endangered Language. Dunan is doomed. In a few decades it will no longer exist and will be forgotten. Together with the language, the world of Yonaguni itself will dissolve: soon there will be no more funeral rites during which bodies are buried in huge tombs in the shape of a mother’s womb and there will be no more yuta, the priestesses who communicate with the spirits of the ancestors.
