more cordial changes
When our linguistic environment changes and we immerse in a language still unknown for us, we sense a foreignness feeling that can be very stimulating. For a short time we can appreciate the new language from our absolute ignorance, before we can establish any connexion, without understanding the structure of repetitions. This situation is exceptional and valuable. Our attention is kept in that inexplicable magma out of which emerge small elements that we can recognize. Some words capture our attention for its unlikely tone, while other words attract us for the things they name, for the concept they portray.
Last year I felt this rewarding surprise with the suomi, the Finnish language. And, with special intensity, with the word väli, that conveys a number of meanings that in my mother tongue need a number of words to name they all.
Väli means the space existing between two things, the distance, the relationship among them.
This word seemed to name exactly something I had tried to show in the material with which I was working.
gemma draper, 2007
