Nicoline van Harskamp: Englishes

Nicoline van Harskamp’s first solo exhibition in Ireland, features five of the eight episodic films from her “Englishes” series—comprising interview, performance, and scripted fiction, exploring the myriad variations of English spoken between people as a link language—and PDGN, a video installation that puts forward a desirable, if unlikely, global link language for the future.

“Englishes” (2014–16) explores the widespread use and modification of the English language by its non-native speakers, or “Englishes.” Researched and produced in collaboration with a range of art institutions and universities, each video work engages a particular area of linguistics such as phonology, pragmatics or translation. Van Harskamp has worked together with, among others: language teachers, linguists, language inventors, multi-lingual children and actors in order to study and explore “Englishes” and the particulars and conceptualisation of this transient type of language. Inspired by the fluid and dynamic nature that is fuelled by the intentional, deliberate and functional changes introduced by their speakers, the artist envisages the dissolution of English into varieties of future “Englishes,” a common and ever-growing linguistic resource. The compilation presents: Portrait of an Englishes Collector, 2015; Her Production, 2014; Wer Mae Hao, 2015; Darling Good Night, 2016; and A Romance in Five Acts and Twenty-one Englishes, 2015.

Made in 2016, PDGN is a short fictional film that portrays a future in which the world is no longer run by national governments or global corporations, and that is neither utopian nor dystopian. A new link language is seen to develop between people across the world through voluntary self-instruction. The video’s script was constructed from actual spoken, non-native English that was recorded as part of the artist’s previous work and in a series of workshops, and further developed by applying common and expected factors of language evolution in the areas of syntax, lexicon, and phonetics. Project’s foyer hosts a video projection of lines from the PDGN script that are “distorted” in various lexical or syntactic ways. This installation suggests an instruction method for a future global link language—a continuous flow of varieties developed through experience and exposure, rather than learned through a central set of rules.

Nicoline van Harskamp’s exhibition at Project marks a point of departure in her research and development of a new performative work, which will be co-produced by Project Arts Centre and partners and presented in Dublin in October 2018. It takes as its core subject the proper or personal name, and the tradition of naming processes. Already a subject matter in her earlier works on language prediction, proper names cross boundaries of languages, cultures, religions and nationalities in ways that most other words cannot.

Nicoline van Harskamp is an Amsterdam-based artist whose work considers acts of language and communication in relation to ideology and solidarity through video, installation, and scripted performance. Her recent solo presentations and live events were presented at Archive Kabinett Berlin (2017); Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam (2017); Tenderpixel, London (2017); BAK, Utrecht (2016), C3A, Cordoba (2016), KunstWerke, Berlin (2015), Extra City, Antwerp (2015); Onomatopee, Eindhoven (2015); Kunstraum, London (2014), and BMW Tate Live Performance Room, London (2013).

The exhibition is kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fund. Special thanks to Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin.

Project Arts Centre is supported by the Arts Council and Dublin City Council.