23.07.23
Transcript: Tatum Calvino

Some things can't be understood through theory, only practice.
I guess that’s how the T(( ))mb’s all started.
A sociocultural information matrix, situated, contextual and embodied.

Spring 2017 unit Cassandra began, a pilot project to test if literature could be used as an “early warning system”. Could civil unrest, war, uprisings be predicted by mapping fictional infrastructure? they had a risk score system; 9 indicators per book: thematic reach, censorship, media response, scandals, literary awards, and narrative strategy. The book was assigned a score between –1 to +3: the higher the score, the more “dangerous” the text.
Why was this concerning?

Well at first this academic military unit was eager to observe… but how soon would it be weaponise it? The world we know and live inside is founded on cycles and systematic communication. We are condemned to repeat the training of language because of the frustration of not being understood is too great, its social evolution. Language is among a norm-based society’s most effective prison. And it performs itself exclusively as a theoretical idea, made real through media, academia and culture. That's when they began building the T(())mb’s to directly support linguistic belief in action, it is not practised as entertainment but as experience, direct action and as asemic investigation. The languages they speak have no hierarchy, they operate as a horizontal decentralized dialect, often in tandem. A hyper tool against new language states.

Commissioned by KUNSTRAUM NIEDEROESTERREICH
Curatorial support: Frederike Sperling

Soundscore: Fjóla Gautadóttir aka lemonboy
Camera and Editing: Mark Hunt
Photography: Jonas Schoeneberg
Sound Recordist and Audio Post Production: Alfie Brooks
Assistant: Mina Kalvøy
Subtitling: Jonas Schoeneberg
Installation Photography: Markus Gradwohl

Quantum Listening - Pauline Oliveros

Simone Weil - The Power of Words

Borderlands - Gloria Anzaldua

Asemic, Peter Schwenger

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

Native Tongue - Suzette Haden Elgin

schizophrene - bhanu kapil