towards a migratory interview aesthetic (paper) - katja frimberger
TRANSCRIPT
(show slide 1)
Towards a migratory interview aesthetic – The interviewer’s bodily discomfort as
aesthetic key moment.
The following paper has developed out of my work as postdoctoral researcher on the
research project ‘Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and
the State’, a project that is – broadly speaking - concerned with the various ethical,
methodological and aesthetic implications that result from researching in multilingual
contexts, especially when people's bodies and languages are politically and psychologically
'under pressure'.
My first job as postdoc located in what is called the Creative Arts and Translating Cultures
Hub of the Researching Multilingually Project, involved the production of an 11 min., short
promotional film. The film, entitled Speaking your language, was produced as a
promotional, public engagement tool for the research project’s public launch event in May
2014 in Glasgow, UK.
(show slide 2)
My focus for this paper is on my feeling of bodily discomfort as the interviewer for this film,
at the moment when I asked interviewees to switch from speaking in English to speaking or
singing in their chosen, spoken language. What insights can be gained from my experience
of discomfort for a multilingual research practice?
In order to answer this question, I organised my paper in three points:
(show slide 3)
1. Firstly, I define the theoretical framework for the paper. I explain Mieke Bal's term
'Migratory Aesthetics' and Sarah Ahmed's notion of 'Hearing-as-Touch' and give an
example of these key terms in film interview practice, through Bal’s example of
making the film Lost in Space in 2005.
2. Secondly, I use the key terms migratory aesthetic and hearing-as-touch to frame my
own experience of linguistic incompetence when interviewing for our project film
Speaking your language.
3. In my third and final point I summarise the findings of my paper and explain the
potential of linguistic incompetence for a multilingual research practice.
(show slide 4)
The first Key term: Migratory aesthetics
Bal writes, “Migratory aesthetics is a non-concept, a ground for experimentation that opens
up possible relations with the ‘migratory’, rather than pinpointing such relations”.
Migratory aesthetics is not a concept that is an abstraction from the experience of
migration, but is described as a space of experimentation. Within this space of
experimentation, an aesthetic is shaped through the various manifestations of migratory
experiences. Migratory aesthetics collapses the distinction between the act of making an
aesthetic ‘as form’ and the experience of migration ‘as content’. Form, in my case for
example the aesthetic of the film interview, and the content of the interview - people's
relationships to their spoken languages - were interdependent.
Working from a migratory aesthetics in the context of the Speaking your language film
production meant to be open to people’s language practices as manifestations of their
migratory experiences. This included consideration of how their language practice might
shape the aesthetic of the film interview.
(show slide 5)
The second Key term: Hearing-as-touch
Sarah Ahmed writes,
“To think of hearing as touch is to consider that being open to hearing might not be a
matter of listening to the other's voice: what moves (between) subjects, and hence
what fails to move, might precisely be that which cannot be presented in the register of
speech.”
Hearing-as-touch is described by Ahmed as a form of hearing between subjects that allows a
questioning of the assumption that communication is about straightforward linguistic
exchange in the first place. Hearing-as-touch draws attention to the fact that
communication can be described in sensory ways other than auditory perception. The
silences, breaks but also the smooth flows in communication might for example manifest as
bodily sensations, as gestures of comfort and feelings of discomfort.
Let me give an example how hearing-as-touch manifests as gesture of comfort during an
interview situation, by the example of Bal's and Entekhabi's film Lost in Space.
(show slide 6)
Lost in Space is a 17 min. film that presents statements on the 'triple notion of home,
security and borders' by people who have been themselves geographically and linguistically
displaced.
When interviewing Daryush, a Farsi and Greek speaking, 32 year old man who had been an
asylum seeker for half his life, interviewer Bal struggles to sustain the communication,
despite Daryush's eagerness to speak and be interviewed. Interviewer and interviewee have
no language in common and English as the lingua franca of necessity moves slowly.
(show slide 7)
When asked what he most misses about being away from home, Daryush is clearly
frustrated. He has so much to say but speaking English incapacitates him. When Bal
encourages him to speak in Farsi, Daryush bursts into self-expression.
Bal describes her experience of being linguistically out of control when Daryush bursts into
Farsi, as a moment of communicative loss but also as a moment where their communication
was transformed into, what might be described as a hearing-as-touch encounter. Although
Bal can't linguistically decode Daryush's words, she is able to tell from his body language and
facial expressions that he speaks about something deeply meaningful to him. Touched by
the words she can't understand, Bal takes Daryush’s hands and he hugs her with tears in his
eyes. The interviewer’s experience of linguistic incompetence has led to a hearing-as-touch
encounter, in which the loss of a common language has led to a conscious act of re-
establishing communication through a gesture of comfort. Daryush's Farsi outburst as a
mode of multilingual self-expression was ethically more important than the interviewer's
ability to control the interview situation.
The migratory aesthetics of the film interview was shaped by the interviewer's and
interviewee's improvisations of ethical communication in the face of language loss. What
Daryush most missed about home, as Bal's translation later reveals, was speaking his
language. Asserting his right for self-expression in Farsi, and NOT to be translated instantly,
resulted in in a hearing-as-touch-encounter as a gesture of comfort: a hug, tears, the taking
of hands.
This leads me to my second point: Let me now use the key terms, hearing-as-touch as well
as migratory aesthetics to frame my own bodily experience of discomfort when interviewing
for Speaking your language.
(show slide 8)
Speaking your language is a 11 min. long, reflective documentary film which explores
people’s personal connection to their spoken languages through interviewees’ multilingual
songs, spoken welcomes and their reflections on notions of home, as well as the sensory
quality of their languages. Interviewees consisted of twenty multilingual staff and students
from across all disciplines at the University of Glasgow. The interviews were conducted
mainly in English, and partly in interviewees’ respective languages. Interviewees reflected
on the relationship to their languages in English first, and then repeated some of these
reflections in their chosen, spoken language. This short excerpt from the unedited film
footage gives you an idea of the multilingual interview dynamic.
(DOUBLE-click into window to show video on slide 9)
Afonso, who you saw in the clip, expressed his joy of being asked to speak in Portuguese in a
verbal as well as non-verbal way. He leans forward and repositions comfortably on his chair
before starting to speak in Portuguese –as if getting ready for a significant performance.
Other interviewees sang in their languages. Words, as bell hooks says, 'hurtled, flew and
sang' through the room in a way that had a physical, discomforting effect on me as the
interviewer. When exposed to those new language rhythms out of my already linguistically
limited comfort zone, my body literally stiffened.
I am a bilingual German-English speaker and trained as a language teacher. I value language
learning as a deeply enriching, human activity and am normally not afraid of facing my own
linguistic incompetence or making a fool of myself when trying to learn new words. In the
face of this multilingual interview situation however, my values and knowledge didn’t seem
to easily translate into a form of bodily comfort. As the interviewer in the room, I felt out of
control. I couldn’t interview people in their own language. I wasn't able to steer the
conversation. In my role as interviewer, a role normally imbued with power over the
conversational flows of the interview situation, I had lost control.
Unable to fully connect to the unfamiliar words that ‘hurtled’ towards me, although they
sometimes only constituted a repetition of things that were already said in English, I was
rigid in my seat and feeling physically uncomfortable. I was not able to linguistically tune in.
My linguistic loss was mirrored in my feeling of bodily discomfort; it produced the physical
manifestation of a rigid body posture. Hearing new language sounds had become a form of
hearing-as-touch that I was able to internally locate in my body. My tummy felt squeezy, my
body felt awkward.
I uncomfortably sat in my seat, smiling, probably awkwardly, at interviewees. What had
linguistically ‘failed to move’ between myself and my interviewees manifested instead in a
bodily sensation.
My discomfort, although caused by language loss, was however not the endpoint of
communication. It required my conscious decision to accept being linguistically incompetent
and out of control of the interview situation. And it required the decision to listen beyond
the register of speech.
(show slide 10)
This physical experience of discomfort points towards the ways in which language loss might
touch a person. My discomfort forced me to face my linguistic loss and make a conscious
decision to listen beyond the register of speech, as an act of valuing interviewees’
multilingual self-expression.
What decisions resulted from facing my bodily discomfort and the linguistic incompetence
that was underlying it? Firstly, I made a practical and an ethical decision. I had to consciously
relax my body and accept being linguistically out of control. Rather than feeling threatened
by my linguistic loss I decided to reconsider the interview situation not as an act of straight
linguistic transfer in which I could hold the linguistic reins. I had to adapt my listening habit
to hear as a form of touch instead. This involved a focus on the embodied flows of
communication: rhythms, melodies, intonations, body postures and facial expressions. My
body started to relax and I was able to open myself again to the here and now of the
interview encounter.
The key moment for the migratory aesthetics of the film interview was the sensory shift
from an internal experience of discomfort to an external focus onto the embodied and
‘artful’ aspects of people’s spoken languages. This involved the acknowledgement that
these embodied elements have the power to carry communication beyond linguistic loss,
thereby valuing the interviewees’ multilingual self-expression and transforming the
interviewer’s bodily discomfort into a renewed communicative connection.
This leads me to my third and final point of the paper. What insights can be gained from the
interviewer’s experiences of hearing-as-touch as gestures of comfort and feelings of
discomfort for a multilingual research praxis?
Giving the example of Mieke Bal’s as well as my film interview practice, I have shown how
linguistic loss during multilingual interviews can manifest in hearing-as-touch encounters as
external gestures of comfort as well as internal feelings of discomfort. Hearing-as-touch
encounters as comforts and discomforts question the assumption that communication is
about transparency of meaning in the first place. Instead, it asserts the value of
interviewees’ multilingual self-expression and the value of establishing of human connection
beyond the register of speech, over the interviewer’s need for instant linguistic clarification
and control over the communicative flows.
By the example of my own interview practice, I also described how linguistic loss can
manifest internally, in a form of bodily discomfort which required my ethical and practical
decisions during interview. These decisions involved the acceptance of being linguistically
incompetent and the decision to listen as form of touch beyond my internal discomfort.
A focus on the artful and embodied aspects of the multilingual interview situation –
rhythms, melodies, non-verbal expressions – allowed me to transition into a stance of bodily
comfort where I could open myself again to the here and now of the interview situation.
(show slide 11)
Let me pinpoint my findings. What did I concretely learn from these multilingual interview
situations?
I learned that as a multilingual researcher I need to allow the multilingual interview space to
become a space of migratory aesthetics in which people’s language practice can shape the
interview aesthetic. I learned that by prioritising people’s multilingual self-expression over
my need for linguistic control, I enter into hearing-as-touch encounters. I open myself to
encounters that can indeed make me feel linguistically out of control and even physically
uncomfortable. But within my personal experience of incompetence and discomfort lies the
potential for recognising that multilingual communication, and with that filmmaking and
research itself, might not be about straight linguistic transfer and instant transparency of
meaning in the first place. Learning from Bal, Ahmed and my own experience, I venture that
multilingually-oriented research and filmmaking is about facing up to the ethical and
reflective potentialities of language loss. And it is about practicing forms of communication
beyond the register of speech and in the face of language loss. These forms of
communication might be described as hearing-as-touch encounters that manifest as
external gestures of comfort (a hug, tears, the taking of hands) and also as reflections on our
internal experiences of discomfort. Moments of comforts and discomforts that might
become key moments for shaping a migratory interview aesthetic.
Bibliography
Film
Lost in Space. 2005. Color video, 17 min. Produced by: Bal, M. & Entekhabi, S.
Speaking your language. 2014. Color video, 11 min. Produced by: Bishopp, S. &
Frimberger, K. Retrieved at: http://vimeo.com/96840216
Books & Journals
Ahmed, S. 2000. Strange encounters – embodied others in post-coloniality. London:
Routledge.
Bal, M. 2007a. Lost in Space, Lost in the Library. In: Durrant, S. & Lord, C. M. (2007).
Essays in Migratory Aesthetics: Cultural practices between Migration and Art-
making. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi.
Bal, M 2007b. Translating translation. In: Journal of Visual Culture April 2007 vol. 6
no. 1 109-124.Doi: 10.1177/1470412907075072
hooks, b. 1994.Teaching to Transgress – Education as the Practice of Freedom. New
York, London: Routledge.
Phipps, A. 2013. Linguistic incompetence: Giving an account of researching
multilingually. In: International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Special Issue:
Researching Multilingually, Volume 23, Issue 3, pages 329–341.
Website
Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language, the Body, Law and the State/ Project
website: http://researching-multilingually-at-borders.com/