The Language Between Us draws on my ongoing interest in language acquisition. After living in Norway for the past few years and learning Norwegian for my partner, I am interested in the appropriation of words; how one can take a language (foreign, patriarchal or mother tongue) and make it one’s own.

This self-portrait, performance video can be contextualised in relation to Russian psychoanalysis Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea that language only exists in the interaction with the other and it is within this exchange that meaning is created for the  individual. The process of taking on another’s words can be difficult; it is through trial introjection and projection that the self emerges. The results of the process of acquiring a language have similar repercussions on a sense of self, which are played out on the body.

This video is not a documentation of a performance, rather performance for the camera, exploring putting process on screen.