In transit, without a destination, you are stepping up stairs, walking across bridges, from one place to another. You are always careful when you step up stairs. You have fallen before, and you do not want to fall this time. You take a hesitant step.
Language is an easy tool to translate thought. From language, we agree that we understand the logic of this translation. You say, ‘Ah’. I say, ‘Oh’. You say, ‘Aha’. I say, ‘Woohoo’. We have our code to make this agreement. The sound flows from a movement of the tongue. We forgot the baby stage of mumbling, burbling and stuttering. We think we have a perfect code for the transfer of our cognitive worlds. The world before language. The status of being messy, dirty and raw. Downstairs.
You are in awe when you saw the giant blue elephant in the room. You did not expect to see the giant elephant, you lost your speech. The surprise of silence trembles in your head. The waterfall of words are all entangled. I do not know how to talk to you when only awe floods out of your mouth. I only know, then, that I need to bring warmth to you, and make you feel safe and warm. You will feel calm from the warmth in your skin. You will be able to let it out; all the raw diagrams without words. All pitch without frequency. Logorrhoea.
This is not a love letter, but invitation to letter writing. From you to me, this is the furthest distance. The distance allows us to be who we are. The distance makes me see the translations of your words. I come to my seat, taking my bus, thinking through what happened during the dialogue between us. You come to your kitchen, make your lunch, peel the onions, listen to the radio, digest our dialogue slowly. You left some stained table-cloths after we shared tea time. You are exploring the unknown unknown. In the echo of that unknown sound, I make another layer. This makes the landscapes of the time and memory, which we lose sight of in our settlements. We dwell on each other’s independence. We are never going to be together. We will only be connected vaguely, as cleft lips are uncomfortably together.
You will wonder where is this “South”, these “Mountains”, this “Silk” and “Sea”. The translations can be different between you and I; I give you these gestures of signs that will give pieces of the puzzle but not any whole frame. The puzzles are the fragmented paths to trial a journey.
Warmly,
Taey Iohe
Dear Taey Iohe/ Imaginary Artist,
We are very much looking forward to attending your exhibition at the Insa Art Space in Seoul. We have travelled a long way and we are not certain whether we are going in the right direction. We heard that there would be a mountain and a sea here; some of us had never heard of a mountain and were scared. Some of us had never seen the sea and were scared in a different way.
We left our home a long time ago. Some of us
re-re-re-call-re-re-member
what home looked like. How can we see our home from the summit of the Golden Mountain? How will we know if your Southern Sea will have a tide to take us back to our home? We want to find a boat that will survive a journey on this sea. Perhaps we could find a flying bed that will carry us over this sea? Voices can sound different on the sea; they sound different echoing over the crags and inclines of a mountain. We could understand ourselves before. Now on this new landscape, the words echo strangely and the
sententententences
won't end
correc-correc-correctly.
We are trusting that you can help us to put our world back together. Words are not travelling so far now. It is more difficult
mord-mord-mord-mord
more difficult to break open the surface of the world and find meaning in the earth of the mountain or the waves of the sea. Sometimes the world will not absorb our languages and we are frightened of the way the map looks when we walk onto it.
We hope that if we come to see the Southern Sea and Silk Mountain, the liquid ocean will teach us to move with a strange language, and speak it before we understand what it means. We want to float so
floatsofloatsofloatso
that language carries us on a constant current. We hope that we will be able to dig our way under the Silk Mountain with some sharp fragments of old and forgotten words and grammar.
Where is the 남해금산? 어디에 Southern Sea? Qu'est ce que Suden See? Wo ist der 산?
Transporting languages. Constell-인사-installations.
We will travelogue to you.
With best wishes,
The Audience.