Voice Over I

Voice Over I
Voice Over I consists of two separately installed videos:
Voice Over I (1), Digitized VHS from 1987. 00:50 min.
Voice Over I (2), HD video. 12:00 min.
2021

Voice Over I explores the complexities of linguistic encounters and hierarchies across generations, drawing from Halvadaki’s own background as half Greek, half Danish.
The work investigates what it means to lose or gain language across generations—in this case through Halvadaki’s relationship with her father and the fact that they do not share a native language.

From this perspective, 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 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 she 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 received from her father. The letter is written in his native Greek—a language Halvadaki does not fully read, write, or speak. On the audio track, we hear Halvadaki’s voice as she attempts to read her father’s letter, a reading that includes stumbling over unfamiliar words, mispronouncing words and sentences, and general difficulty getting through the text. Meanwhile, a black screen fills the frame; as we hear the letter read aloud, white text appears, translating the spoken letter back into text—this time in Danish.

The title, Voice Over I, points to the different linguistic conditions present in the work’s voices. It questions the relationship between a given “I”—a subject—and its voice or speech. It also creates space to reflect on speech, voice, access to language, and expression through speech. Together, these factors shape understandings of identity and belonging.

Moreover, it is a title that cannot 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.