Kaitlin Rees

"This work originates from standing on corners and cycling through alleyways on a recycling collection bicycle, asking people to give their words away as they might give away broken and useless electronic appliances for recycling. I recorded their responses and then wrote a text.

I asked for « used » words because I have so few and I know that I need them for survival, yet I don’t want to buy new ones. Though I need to learn, I first wanted to feel the language in a different way, from a different perspective of study, with the spirit of second-hand goods and all the stories that they contain. I ask for the old and broken words to use as my sustenance. This request is, of course, a difficult one.

The audio piece is a compilation of the collected words/ voices, with my reading in the background. I include voices in languages unknown to me because I want to spend more time in this space of uncertainty ; I want to make all kinds of ‘knowing’ more vulnerable.

I think we can understand the languages we do not know just as much as we cannot understand the languages we do indeed know." (Kaitlin Rees)