JHVH
Demonstrative Component was a performance piece that formed part of a larger performative and interventional language event titled JHVH. The event took place on 6 July 2015 as part of my graduate exhibition. The work lasted around 20 minutes and involved myself as performer, as well as six individuals who partook in the interventional / participatory aspects of the language event. The work concerned itself with the language and jargon of ritual and institutional discourse, as well as with distortion, complexity and linguistic failure.
The participants were seated at an oval table, where A5-sized booklets were distributed. I drew attention to the front cover on which the paleo-Hebrew equivalent of the letters ‘JHVH’ was to be seen along with an abstract background image that had been produced through sound visualization. The subtitle reads: “GENESTALGIA in LYRICAL ETYMA: A Multimodal Language Event.” The booklet’s page order is arranged from right to left.
As allocated in the booklet, the language event progressed in three stages, namely the “Demonstrative component”, the “Preparatory component”, and the “Practical component”.
Demonstrative Component was the first section of JHVH and lasted roughly 5 minutes. It started with me withdrawing an old, black mobile phone from my pocket. A number was dialed and the phone was placed on the table. It was on loudspeaker mode and the crackling ring of an international call lingered for some time before being followed by a rehearsed female voice (my mother’s) answering the call in broken, transformed Modern Hebrew. I answered my mother in a similar language form. The dialogue reflected several translations found in the booklet. Some of the participants attempted to follow the various representations of the dialogue in the booklets, while others where just observing the activity and sound production.