INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF LEARNING | Chinasa Vivian Ezugha Workshop

The Dancing Tongues

This workshop will explore inaudible speech and look at the phenomena Glossolalia* which translates to speaking in tongues, as a material that propositions the mouth as a vocal space which moves between the semiotic chora - between the verbal and nonverbal to create images formed through acoustics. In theatre, we understand that theatre itself is not just a visual or textual representation; but it can be sound. Therefore, together we will see with our ears, speak with sounds, exploring the liminal spaces of language as sound.

The aim is to create a space where we can all explore our tongues as mechanics that can be altered to reflect a sense of otherness; to use the tongue to destroy or reassemble words into letters and play around with words as sounds and phonetics.

As a self, a body of fluids and matter

My tongue engages in glossolalia to escape the need to communicate sense to the world.

Glosso- glossa, the lalia of the lilies of the valley

I am in my own mind, in my own thoughts

Expanding and pushing outwards

Moving like the river, my work is to never cease

At a point in time, my speech was altered to reflect another’s identity

Then I found glossolalia

And I found a new existence

Kaa e lo mi sk

Tlmo

Pa

I bo ka

*Glossolalia is a Greek word for speaking in tongues and is a phonetic utterance that has an expansive meaning across many cultures and religious practices.

The workshop is aimed at those with an interest in voice studies, artists, speech therapists and psychologists.

Biography

Chinasa Vivian Ezugha is an artist living and working in Hampshire, interested in history and how history is performed in the mundanity of everyday living; for her, performance is an embodiment of past, present and future experiences. Born in Nigeria, Enugu state in 1991, Ezugha makes work that connects her to her cultural heritage and to questions about her identity as a black woman living in England. Vivian is an interdisciplinary artist, working in Live Art, film and drawing. Having graduated from Aberystwyth University, School of Art and MA Performance Making at Goldsmiths, Ezugha’s work has been shown in New York, Berlin and in venues across the UK. She is the winner of the New Art Exchange Open Main Prize (2019), and a recipient of the Santander Universities Post Covid-19 Performance Making Enterprise Award (2020), supported by Santander Universities and ICCE, Goldsmiths, University of London. Ezugha is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter and a Research Associate at the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry.

The Dancing Tongue, video still, Chinasa Vivian Ezugha 2021