Caroline Bergvall and Ciarán Maher

Say Parsley

Lingua Franca

During 2010, Arnolfini presents a series of exhibitions and events related to the idea of Lingua Franca: looking at intermediary language, linguistic translation and the subjectivity of language.

As part of Lingua Franca there is also an online project _feralC_ by mez (2010).

Say Parsley is a sparse sound and language installation by London-based French-Norwegian writer Caroline Bergvall and Irish composer Ciarán Maher. Organised across a number of spaces, the installation becomes a place for mishearings, recognition, assumptions, misattribution. You hear what you want to hear. You hear what you think you hear.

The background to Say Parsley is the biblical 'shibboleth', a violent event where language itself is gatekeeper, and a pretext to massacre. The pronunciation of a given word exposes the identity of the speaker. To speak becomes a give-away. Are you one of us, not one of us? How you speak will be used against you.

The most recent example of a large scale shibboleth was the massacre of tens of thousands of Creole Haitians on the border of the Dominican Republic in 1937, when the criteria for execution was the failure to pronounce 'perejil' (parsley) in the accepted Spanish manner, with a rolling 'r'.

Exhibition tours
You can hear more about the exhibition in free, informal tours on some Saturdays. 

Downloads

Say Parsley Exhibition Guide (PDF document, 214Kb)

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