Esperanto was a language created through mixing the existing languages of the world in order to be easily learned by anyone. It never took, but I decided to use it as an inspiration for this project. "Milito" is the esperanto word for war.
For this project, I collected words from native speakers of languages representing countries/cultures known to be at war. I collected words like mother, money, love, hate, and war.
This project was the sole embodiment of this idea, and took place in the "Fear, Paranoia, and Malevolence" show at ABC No Rio in 2003.
The image depicts the word "war" as written and spoken by a Palestinian Arabic speaker, and an Israeli Hebrew speaker. The word is expressed in a video at the center of the installation in which the speakers' mouths alternately voice "War" in their appropriate language. The sound of the word was translated into a sound wave painting with the wave itself depicted in gold leaf. The actual written words were framed and placed on either side of the video.
