Paralingual score by Clara Mosconi

Paralingual score
Exhibition and publication launch by Clara Mosconi
24.10 - 09.11.2024

Programme
Thursday 24 October 17:00-20:00: Opening. Performance at 18.00.
Saturday 26 October 13.00-14.30: Presentation of the publication Paralingual Score with artist Samuel Brzeski

In the exhibition Paralingual Score, the audience is invited into an investigative space where the invisible dimensions of language emerge. The installation presents a paralinguistic polyphony, composed of the material that escapes the mouth when the tongue the tongue ties knots.

A choir of eight voices performs a graphic score that spreads across the walls of Bladr in a cyclical composition. The score is based on an interview Mosconi conducted with a woman named Sara in Linz, Austria in January 2024. Sara, like the artist, is multilingual and finds that her mother tongue has gradually faded. The conversation is centred around navigating multiple languages, fluid cultural identities and the importance of a mother tongue. The interview is one of many, and the score was created using the Paralinguistic Index - a new and playful communication system consisting of 32 symbols, each of which represents a paralinguistic phenomenon in our language. Mosconi uses the symbols to make transcriptions, which she considers a kind of graphic score.

The exhibition will be further activated by Italian soprano Felicita Brusoni, who will interpret the score in the space for the opening.

The Paralinguistic Index is published as a freely accessible digital font. The font can be downloaded here: https://claramosconi.com/Paralingual-Index-no-1

Clara Mosconi (b. 1995, DK/IT) works with voice and language, specifically in the field of multilingualism, challenging linguistic hierarchies. Mosconi's work is driven by her experience of gradually losing her second language, Italian, and the resulting attempts to build relationships outside of rational language. 


The exhibition is supported by Statens Kunstfond, Statens Værksteder for Kunst and Rådet for Visuel Kunst.

Publication launch

The exhibition is based on Clara Mosconi's publication of the same name, Paralingual Score, which is a text work and graphic score, commissioned by Lydgalleriet in Bergen.
The publication will be launched on October 26th, is conversation with publisher Samuel Brzeski.

Samuel Brzeski is an artist, writer and publisher working with language as raw material—moulding, stretching and transforming texts on screens, on the page and within speech sound. He is an Associate Artist at Lydgalleriet, Bergen, has recently completed the Maumaus Independent Study Program, Lisbon, and will be a 2025 participant in the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht. Originally from London, Samuel now lives and works in Bergen, where he runs the publishing projects TEXST and Vibrational Semantics.

Vibrational Semantics explores the voice’s ability to shift seamlessly between signification and sonority, from speech sound to noise. Questions of linguistic ambiguity, embodied voicing and the feeling/ meaning are investigated in relation to the place and presence of the performed voice.

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