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„Làk-kat“ Anri Sala The title of the work "Làk-kat" by the Anri Sala is from one of the languages of Senegal, Wolof. "Làk-kat" means a person whose mother tongue is different from the language of the country where this person is. This slightly awkward explanation already indicates what Sala's "Làkkat" is about. It is about meaning and the loss of meaning, about references and the (non-) translatability of language. In the framework of a minimal setting – two children and an adult in a dark room dimly lit by a neon light – Sala leaves the naming function of language dangling. The children are told to repeat certain words again and again, but they always make mistakes, are distracted by a moth in the room and do not really seem to understand the meaning of the words. The words relate to lightness and darkness. Whereas the Wolof words for green, yellow or blue are replaced by French vocabulary, there is a broad linguistic scope for shades of skin color, of light, and of black or white. The film also concentrates on the spectrum of colors and words with its filmic means. Although it is filmed in color, it is reduced to the same shades of light and dark that the children name. It thus remains unclear what the words relate to: to the color shades of the film, to the room and the lamp, to skin colors, to visibility/invisibility? In this way the viewers are confronted with the extent to which their own understanding of words is culturally dependent. At the same time, the words are repeated so often by the children that they lose their meaning and are left only as an abstract pattern of sounds. Even with this small constellation of "Làk-kat", Sala thus brushes away all certainty about what we think to see or understand here. Artist, born 1974, lives and works in Berlin. |
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