Academic Centre
The small island of La Gomera lies 5,000 km distant from Riga. Due to
ever evolving forms of telecommunication and social transformations, El
Silbo, the whistling language of La Gomera's native Guanches, is threatened with extinction. El Silbo is a means of communication that transforms verbal speech into whistles. Originally, it made communication across great distances possible. A whistle can deliver a message across a distance of five kilometres, thus transmitting the human voice as far as possible without the use of any technical aids.
By the 1970s the language of El Silbo had almost died out. And then scientists began to research it. Thanks to this outside perspective, El
Silbo became an integral element in the formation of the cultural identity of the residents of La Gomera. The initial context in which the whistled language was used was replaced by new contexts. There is no unequivocal answer to the question of the purpose that this form of communication serves nowadays, just as the definition of identity itself will always remain a matter for debate.
The master whistler Kico Correa performs the text _Iestrēdzis Застрял_ (Stuck) – written in both Latvian and Russian – by emulating the sound characteristics of the two languages in whistles, but without speaking either language. Language is uncoupled from the subject and becomes pure voice. Hearing a voice means, primarily, noticing that someone else is present. Listening on the other hand already implies acceptance of the presence of the other. _Iestrēdzis Застрял_ (Stuck) draws in “the voice as a material base for identity formation as well as a site where conflict, negotiation and surprising intimacy intersect (...) underscoring audition as a charged and also generous work itself, especially for approaching the other.“
Supported by: Skanu Mezs, the Austrian Ministry of Education, Art and
Culture,the Berlin Cultural Affairs Senate Chancellery, European Union programme Culture, EUNIC, Goethe-Institut.
The Silbadores project is the winner of ECAS (European Cities of
Advanced Sound) Call 2012.
About the International Sound Art Exhibition SKAN II
