Gregory tsū 2002 nî khai-sí gián-kiù gí-giân ê sí-tsua̍t. I jīn-uî gē-su̍t-ka ài tsiâⁿ-tsò siā-huē jīn-tông kap siā-huē huat-tián li̍k-sú ê tsí-piau. I kuan-tshat tio̍h gí-giân siū-tio̍h tsuân-kiû-huà ê íng-hióng, tio̍h tshan-tshiūⁿ ....
Since 2002, Gregory has been conducting research into language endangerment. Taken up by the artist as a key indicator of the identity and historical development of a society, she notes that language has been subject to the effects of globalisation in a similar way that, due to increasing travel, traffic and ‘development’, biological diversity has been reduced. Language is our main way of making sense of the world, and by linking patterns in biodiversity with linguistic diversity, Gregory looks at the complex relationship between language, the environment and survival. Her current projects look at the dialects N/u, El Silbo and British Sign Language. N/u is one of the oldest, and most at risk languages; it uses click consonants and is only spoken by around 20 of the San people in the southern Kalahari Desert. El Silbo is a whistled language used on La Gomera in the Canary Islands, and is the subject of Gregory’s video Gomera (2010) shown in Sydney. Carrying much further than the spoken word, whistling was taken up by the island’s inhabitants as a way of conversing across distances as far as eight kilometres. This tongue is explored in mesmeric footage that charts a journey to the island, penetrates into jungle-like natural landscapes, and captures the beauty of the whistled exchanges.
Siōng-bué ê bô-siaⁿ tiān-iáⁿ (2007) sī tsi̍t tshut 20 hun-tsing ê. Iōng í-king sí kap kiông-beh sí ê gí-giân tsò tsú-tê, kā tsia-ê gí-giân ê lo̍k-im uē--tshut-lâi.
The Last Silent Movie (2007) is a 20-minute audio work presented simply and without visuals on a black screen, accompanied by subtitles and a series of 24 etchings. It takes extinct and dying languages as its subject, drawing content from sound recording archives. In the form of songs, stories, lists of vocabulary and at times direct accusations of injustice, Hiller gives voice to the lost and forgotten subjects that are no longer of this world, providing a composition that figuratively releases these ‘ghosts’ of the past.
24 The unfamiliarity of the 24 included languages – Border Cuna, Jiwarli, Kolyma Yucaghir, Livonian, Manx and Xoleng, to name a few – induces the shocking realisation that there are so many linguistic traditions that have been lost, and that with them the diversity and humanity of memory and culture have been irrevocably reduced. This highlights the homogenising colonisation of modernity. In this work, Hiller also gives shape to different lost languages in a series of etchings that visualise sound waves from the individual tongues.
