MEMT
MAGIC EARTH MOTHER TONGUE
Scope: MEMT is a collaborative, multilingual public sound-art-music-video project based on research around BIO-CULTURAL Diversity in the Salish Sea Basin. Bio-cultural diversity refers to the way..
“human communities have developed thousands of different cultures and languages, distinctive ways of seeing, knowing, doing and speaking that have been shaped by the interactions between people and the natural world.” Maffi, L. Talking diversity. World Conservation: The magazine of the World Conservation Union, January 2008: 13-14.
Biodiversity has strong links to cultural and linguistic diversity in that areas of particular linguistic diversity tend to be more biodiverse than the ecology of a monoculture. Areas with more traditional indigenous and locally based communities are typically more diverse linguistically which means more traditional environmental knowledge exists which are reflected in greater care taken towards the maintenance of local ecosystems. Where outliers are in power, where less localized power is at play in regards to environmental conditions and resources, Bio-cultural diversity is in peril.
PROJECT GOALS
If cultural and linguistic diversity safeguard biodiversity we must build our communication skills, learn old and new languages to understand and activate our collective bio-cultural diversity.
We intend to make intermedia public art about all the languages that are spoken around us, in the open and in secret, lost and recovered, native and nonnative, to begin to understand and honor the past, present and potential biodiversity of our community. These video shorts will be collected and screened for the Bellingham community, projected on the side of the Herald Building and online and on the campus of Western Washington University in Fall 2021.
Magic Earth Mother Tongue uses language as a means for equitable cultural exchange. As we learn and teach, embrace not knowing and work towards understanding, language exists as a neutral and nonthreatening tool for communication.
To honor the Earth, the source of our words, our creative production will take as subject the natural phenomena and ecosystems native to the Salish Sea Basin. As we experience the ecology that inspires our speech, recognize the value of diversity across culture and nature, we will recover what ties us together and to the environment.