Inclined language: a visual, material practice

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the experiential field of artistic pieces that incline language and words to work from their sound, material and rhythmic dimension. They are poetic and sound works freed from the verticality, rectitude and weight of the semantic. In our ordinary experience of language we forget the physical existence of words, their sounds, their rhythms. Without that physicality, words become transparent, completely resolved into what they mean. To incline them means to give them sound and rhythm. It means to make them material, bringing them to our attention and reconnect with their physical existence: the possibility of becoming an image. From the concept of inclination developed by Adriana Cavarero as a relational model against verticality – to rethink a subjectivity marked by vulnerability – it is argued that inclining language, allows us to question ourselves about the ways in which sound relates to images, as it will be seen through works by Itziar Okariz and Gertrude Stein. A leaning that also dialogues with the ways of deviation from the established language proposed by Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous. In turn, we re-experience our relationship with the materiality of language, the act of listening, as well as the visuality of sounds.