Voice Over I

Voice Over I

Voice Over I (1), Digitized VHS from 1987. 00:50 min. 2021
Voice Over I (2), HD video. 12:00 min. 2021

Voice Over I consists of two separately installed videos: Voice Over I (1) and Voice Over I (2). The work investigates what it means to lose or gain language through generations - in this case through Halvadaki’s relationship with her father and the fact that they do not share a native language. 

Voice Over I reflects on identity and cultural affiliation as well as the challenges of not always being able to put inner thoughts into words. What happens when hierarchies, rooted in linguistic proficiency, are shifted within a specific context or relationship? Can "failing" a language in itself open up a meaning forming space, and can meaning be created here across linguistic "boundaries"?

The first video, Voice Over I (1),  is a VHS clip from 1987. In the clip, we see Halvadaki as a young child entering a typical looking Danish kitchen where her father is cooking. Halvadaki and her father have a brief conversation in Greek after which Halvadaki exits the kitchen and the clip loops. 
The focal point of the second video, Voice Over I (2),  is also a conversation between Halvadaki and her father. This time, in the form of a letter the artist has received from her father. The letter is written in his native language Greek - a language Halvadaki does not fully read, write or speak. On the audio side we hear Halvadaki's voice as she attempts to read her father's letter, a reading that includes stumbling over words she does not know, mispronouncing words and sentences, as well as having general difficulty getting through the written text. Meanwhile a black space fills the screen and as we hear the letter read allowed, white text appears translating the spoken letter back into text - this time translated into Danish.

The title, Voice Over I, points to the different linguistic conditions that are present in the voices of the work. The title brings into question the relationship between a given “I” - a subject and its voice or speech and opens up a room to reflect on the dynamics of speech, voice, access to language, expression through speech, as well as how these factors play into understandings of identities and notions of belonging. Moreover it’s a title that can not be translated without losing its inherent english wordplay on voice-over and voice over. Thus, the title points to the very act of translating and to the nuances that both disappear and arise in this work.

The title Voice Over I is borrowed from the writings of Trinh T. Minh-ha from her book Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event.