Cecilie Fang Jensen

'at the end of the sentence, it rotted' gathers written words and photos exploring how language is not purely about communication, but a medium of revealing hierarchy of bodies, as we assign and circulate signs to bodies - none of which are neutral. Moving between auto-theoretical poetry and essays on 104 pages, I write with an I using language to explore language itself from within; appropriating how words are never innocent, when the languages we speak are the ones with political value.

Sometimes forgetting what has been constructed as my native tongue and, therefore, being unable to speak with loved ones, the work reflects on the mother tongue as a political construct and the diasporic conditions of language; how language at times excludes when people migrate from one country and native tongue to another. Looking upon a history of constructed languages and seeing language as a territory of power structures, the installation consists of abstractions of writing systems that through asemics speculate on alternative ways of languaging - and what it means to be unable to speak. As an outsider of a language, any written or spoken words are purely strokes and phonetics; an asemic relation, when you are unable to grasp the meaning of words. Through water being pumped in and reversed after 8 hours, the installation builds an environment to transform language into decay. As the rust builds up and biomaterial decays, the image is constantly transformed. A live soundscape is programmed as an ecosystem, which sonifies the writing strokes and reproduces them similarly to mold. When language ends up excluding and including depending on who does and who does not speak, at the end of the sentence, it rotted searches for a language that includes all. Through bio-asemic rust and decay, it presents a living image that defies categorization by being in constant motion. It’s a return to a time of pre-linguistics, where sound and touch are prominent. To return to a time before words became the dominant way of communicating.

Sometimes forgetting what has been constructed as my native tongue and, therefore, being unable to speak with loved ones, the work reflects on the mother tongue as a political construct and the diasporic conditions of language; how language at times excludes when people migrate from one country and native tongue to another. Looking upon a history of constructed languages and seeing language as a territory of power structures, the installation consists of abstractions of writing systems that through asemics speculate on alternative ways of languaging - and what it means to be unable to speak. As an outsider of a language, any written or spoken words are purely strokes and phonetics; an asemic relation, when you are unable to grasp the meaning of words. Through water being pumped in and reversed after 8 hours, the installation builds an environment to transform language into decay. As the rust builds up and biomaterial decays, the image is constantly transformed. A live soundscape is programmed as an ecosystem, which sonifies the writing strokes and reproduces them similarly to mold. When language ends up excluding and including depending on who does and who does not speak, at the end of the sentence, it rotted searches for a language that includes all. Through bio-asemic rust and decay, it presents a living image that defies categorization by being in constant motion. It’s a return to a time of pre-linguistics, where sound and touch are prominent. To return to a time before words became the dominant way of communicating.

Sometimes forgetting what has been constructed as my native tongue and, therefore, being unable to speak with loved ones, the work reflects on the mother tongue as a political construct and the diasporic conditions of language; how language at times excludes when people migrate from one country and native tongue to another. Looking upon a history of constructed languages and seeing language as a territory of power structures, the installation consists of abstractions of writing systems that through asemics speculate on alternative ways of languaging - and what it means to be unable to speak. As an outsider of a language, any written or spoken words are purely strokes and phonetics; an asemic relation, when you are unable to grasp the meaning of words. Through water being pumped in and reversed after 8 hours, the installation builds an environment to transform language into decay. As the rust builds up and biomaterial decays, the image is constantly transformed. A live soundscape is programmed as an ecosystem, which sonifies the writing strokes and reproduces them similarly to mold. When language ends up excluding and including depending on who does and who does not speak, at the end of the sentence, it rotted searches for a language that includes all. Through bio-asemic rust and decay, it presents a living image that defies categorization by being in constant motion. It’s a return to a time of pre-linguistics, where sound and touch are prominent. To return to a time before words became the dominant way of communicating.

These pages were written during a residency in Czechia at Cabin Studio run under Studio Hrdinů, in October 2024. This text begins with the mishearing of a word. It starts from the place of inconvenience and unravels a hearing not contained within one fixed conversation. A hearing that has been expanded into a writing that begins in your bank and extends to your throat when its language heard writes itself into and onto the muscles.

These pages were written during a residency in Czechia at Cabin Studio run under Studio Hrdinů, in October 2024. This text begins with the mishearing of a word. It starts from the place of inconvenience and unravels a hearing not contained within one fixed conversation. A hearing that has been expanded into a writing that begins in your bank and extends to your throat when its language heard writes itself into and onto the muscles.

This work was developed for a performance event at IKLECTIK as a part of the Performance Art Curatorial Fellowship of Valentina Peri. The performance brings people together to extend the understanding of how love can be portrayed, putting care at the center of a multiplicity of relationship(s) and denouncing everyday sexism online. Drawing from hydro- and xenofeminist thinking, the performance takes care beyond the relationship of human dating and extends into another multiplicity of relationships. Sound emerges through touch and movement of the hydrophones, looper, and a poetry reading collecting Tinder bios, as a means of questioning the relationship between desire, language, dating, online sexism, and technology. The performance was in collaboration with Loïs Soleil.

'All tongues are moving, but we don’t hear them all' is a sonic transforming installation. As ice melts, each drop of water triggers sound and results in a changing rustscape. Through rust, the installation mediates on the processes of language and hierarchies of silence through bio-materials. With an interest in materials that together break down individuality to reproduce themselves as a body of multiplicity, the work presents a body that sits between categories and linguistic binaries and instead opens a space for language to leak.

'Material Reading' is a lecture performance, creating a space for practicing artistic research and using performance as a method of doing so within the actions and thoughts manifested. It is a dialogue existing within the borders of sharing research and sharing to / as research. Among auto-theory, exchanged thoughts and literature, our points of departure are processes of asemic writing and heat scanning, which open up a conversation about language existing outside of words in material and sonic transformation. We approach our mother tongues, noticing both their deficiencies and potentials to convey what might not be easy or possible to express in the language that we communicate with each other. Through the exchange of experiences, personal stories and observations related to our material practice and how we perceive verbal communications - written or spoken, we try to navigate different understandings, and feelings toward what might be said/written/thought/silent/unspoken. Seeing grammar as partially a medium of power, we put in doubt a correctness of the language, making space for slips of the tongue, mistakes, mispunctuations and misunderstandings, that takes us somewhere else in our dialogue and leaves space for other ways of languaging to emerge. The work was developed and performed with Aleksandra Komsta.

'Ripping Footnotes' is a series of public space initiatives and platform for artistic research. A nomadic platform hosted by different spaces and organizations run in collaboration with Dora Ramljak. The workshop(s) become a space for mutual learning and decentralizing how institutional education is centred around hierarchy; a learning from top-down shaped for able-bodied bodies. A space where re-claiming individual bodies is possible, but only in the creation of a collective body. A space for artistic research in its presence and after-digestion through dialogue. The focus on re-sensing urban space becomes a method of deinstitutionalising care and learning in form of public drawing and sound workshops. Each workshop is centered around listening as a method of caring and drawing as a method of slowing down.At times, we invite guest artists to participate to share their practice and learn together.

'Ripping Footnotes' is a series of public space initiatives and platform for artistic research. A nomadic platform hosted by different spaces and organizations run in collaboration with Dora Ramljak. The workshop(s) become a space for mutual learning and decentralizing how institutional education is centred around hierarchy; a learning from top-down shaped for able-bodied bodies. A space where re-claiming individual bodies is possible, but only in the creation of a collective body. A space for artistic research in its presence and after-digestion through dialogue. The focus on re-sensing urban space becomes a method of deinstitutionalising care and learning in form of public drawing and sound workshops. Each workshop is centered around listening as a method of caring and drawing as a method of slowing down.At times, we invite guest artists to participate to share their practice and learn together.

'Moulting' (= 'Mue' in French) is a site-specific and durational performance, as we bring a water filter to different water ressources over extended time. Hydrocarbon is used in different industries, yet it is also a water pollutant as it enters natural waters. As hair can obtain hydrocarbon from the water, our filter consists of collected hair. A collection we add to, as we donate a piece of our hair each time before entering the water; a collaboration between our bodies and other bodies. The filter is brought into areas polluted with hydrocarbon to obtain the water, afterwhich we defiltrate and depollute. The performance is durational and unfolds across and together with different bodies of water - mainly lakes and rivers. Along the way, we live in a tent and the boundary between living and performing blurs. The performance itself is traced back and shown through a video installation together with jars collecting the defiltrated water and a waterfiltration system with plants that can deconstruct hydrocarbon. This project was in collaboration with Ash Périer and Ernesto Thielemans.

'Moulting' (= 'Mue' in French) is a site-specific and durational performance, as we bring a water filter to different water ressources over extended time. Hydrocarbon is used in different industries, yet it is also a water pollutant as it enters natural waters. As hair can obtain hydrocarbon from the water, our filter consists of collected hair. A collection we add to, as we donate a piece of our hair each time before entering the water; a collaboration between our bodies and other bodies. The filter is brought into areas polluted with hydrocarbon to obtain the water, afterwhich we defiltrate and depollute. The performance is durational and unfolds across and together with different bodies of water - mainly lakes and rivers. Along the way, we live in a tent and the boundary between living and performing blurs. The performance itself is traced back and shown through a video installation together with jars collecting the defiltrated water and a waterfiltration system with plants that can deconstruct hydrocarbon. This project was in collaboration with Ash Périer and Ernesto Thielemans.

This work was developed for a performance event at IKLECTIK as a part of the Performance Art Curatorial Fellowship of Valentina Peri. The performance brings people together to extend the understanding of how love can be portrayed, putting care at the center of a multiplicity of relationship(s) and denouncing everyday sexism online. Drawing from hydro- and xenofeminist thinking, the performance takes care beyond the relationship of human dating and extends into another multiplicity of relationships. Sound emerges through touch and movement of the hydrophones, looper, and a poetry reading collecting Tinder bios, as a means of questioning the relationship between desire, language, dating, online sexism, and technology. The performance was in collaboration with Loïs Soleil.

'On the Border of Lines' is a sound performance. As a mediation on a history of constructed languages, On the Border of Lines is interested in the asemic as a speculative constructed language. Through a relationship of sonic and written abstractions, the work turns to alternate pre-linguistics and the untranslatable. Each dot on the instrument surface results in sound - and in the end, the surface serves as a writing-in-continuous-process.