It Go To Have To Adjust. On Language As Parasite

About

IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE is a series of exercises, research, exhibitions, and public programmes reflecting on the parasitic character of language and on the subversive power of laughter.

Together with artists, writers, programmers, translators, scholars, activists and other thinkers, we endeavor to explore the theory that language is a parasite. We are interested in how that parasite can be and is transmitted between systems that communicate without our influence. If language is a parasite as the writer Susan Blackmore contends, we need to evolve one that is made up of a plurality of voices that we wish to see act for a shared future. If we are “participants in the future of our languages” (Ocean Vuong), how can we make space for more variants of influences in order to facilitate the right climate and conditions for subversive feminist, anti-racist and de-colonial practices within art and publishing? If language is there to make space for our survival, can we find procedures for optimising our communication to aid the creation of networks that can parasitize towards the proliferation and development of liberating practices?

The unfolding of the project begins with travels, research and collaborations, continues with a series of experimental workshops with open and collaborative formats, and will culminate in an exhibition, public programme, and publications that seeks to reflect on the subversive power of language and its transmission, and how that contagion could manifest as laughter and joy as well as disavowal.