rural readers

BERRY ISLAND

2008-08-26T05:26:00.001-07:00

AMATEUR STRUCTURES, VOL 1

2008-07-01T04:40:00.000-07:00

Outdoor Toilet, Nitsij�rvi

Moonshine Cabin, Bj�rnevatn

Food Storage, Mustala

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #7

2008-05-14T05:32:00.000-07:00

The magical properties of an archive

Dismembering the semiotic, communicative from the phonetic, lexical aspect of language opens up a possibility for magical correspondences. The onomatopoetic, the alphabetic, the mimetic. The mysterious shapes of individual letters, the picture puzzle of the word. Language becomes an archive of non-sensuous similarities ready for the reader that connects the dots. The reader then becomes a bearer, a medium for the magical aspect of a shadow language.

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #6

2008-05-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

Language and time

The beginning of the Skolt Saami Language Memory Project speeds up history, that is, the inevitable entropy of a endangered language. The end of the project slows it down again to the point of exhibiting a frozen distribution of a language in time.

Usually one considers language to be distributed in space, by its agents in their geographical area. One can also consider the history of a language - its development and transformation. But seldom, if ever, do one witness a language distributed in time. One word at a time � throughout the months, or years � the installation in the East S�mi Museum will parse through the dictionary depending on the amount of visitors passing by.

(One side effect of this distribution will be the disassociation of the language from the normal identity discourse of indigenous people. Legally, to be counted as Saami you have to document that your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents spoke a Saami language. Language is the principal marker of your identity, which may increase cultural isolation. In this case the language will be given to all � putting into question this identity marker).

MOSQUITO SLIDE

2008-05-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

(image credit: Valentin Laube)

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #5

2008-05-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

A destructive perspective.

Today: the first tests of the recording and archiving system. Everything has to work perfectly before we take it into the field in a couple of months. The informants will be filmed in their home surroundings looking into the camera. The words of the dictionary will appear on the screen before them and they will read them aloud one by one. Each word will be stored as a separate video file on the computer.

A dictionary is in essence artificial. Only some rare kinds of poetry can bring life into a list of words starting with the same letter, and even then it is seldom systematically alphabetical in its construction. The alphabet and written language in general has a stench of death about it.

The choice of the dictionary as the image of language is the complete opposite of language-as-life. If languages are organic and alive by nature then the Language Memory Project would seem to spell out a death sentence for the Skolt Saami language.

To make matters even worse I am asking 30 representatives of the language in question to become dictionary robots reading aloud only the individual words � the atoms of their living language � in a room with no listeners. On the Finish side this will involve about 10% of the Skolt Saami community � on the Russian side it will involve 100%. In effect they will be atomizing their own language into a list of dead, alphabetized items.

All the while I will be there silently filming the spectacle � this burning funeral pyre of a self-destructing language.

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #4

2008-04-29T22:46:00.000-07:00

Phonetic alchemy

The metaphor of dying and living languages is based on a dated romantic conception about languages being organic in structure. Thus there is a need to revisit the dialectic of the death and life of languages to view the language-image from a fresh angle. The philosopher Walter Benjamin writes in the introduction to his essay on Goethe�s Elective Affinities:

� The history of works prepares for their critique, and thus historical distance increases their power. If, to use a simile, one views the growing work as a burning funeral pyre, then the commentator stands before it like a chemist, the critic like an alchemist. Whereas, for the former, wood and ash remain the sole objects of his analysis, for the latter only the flame itself preserves an enigma: that of what is alive. Thus, the critic inquires into the truth, whose living flame continues to burn over the heavy logs of what is past and the light ashes of what has been experienced.

Replacing the concept of �work� with �language� in this quote one can perhaps glimpse a more complex dialectic at play. According to Benjamin�s idea of a critique and the work of the critic it would follow that the critic does the exact same historic and linguistic analysis as the history scientist, or �commentator�. But still their aim and result is vastly different. The critic use the detailed analysis as a means to destroy and dismember the wholeness of the work. This is made more potent by the history that has gone before. The more obscure and forgotten the work, the better suited it is for a philosophical and artistic critique. The resulting destruction-through-analysis is comparable to an archive of language: a dictionary or database of language samples, each analysed into every last miniscule phoneme. The archive kills the living language in order to preserve it, but at the same moment creates its potential alchemical transformation into new life.

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #3

2008-04-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

Numbers

� The amount of words in Skolt (as in all other living languages) is infinite, explains Michael Riessler, head of the Kola Saami Documentation Project in our first email conversation.

� And besides this every speaker of Skolt has its own stock of words in her or his mind. If you restrict to the word stock found in the existing dictionaries of Skolt (and ignoring that not all words found in the dictionaries are representative of all the single speakers' Skolt Saami language) you end up with approx. 10000 recorded words multiplied to more then 30 letters of the alphabet. Every linguist will envy you for such a collection of recorded words!

The facts are not very uplifting: There are 4 Saami languages spoken in the Kola Region (including northern Finland): Skolt, Akkala, Kildin, and Ter. Akkala is now extinct. The last speaker of Akkala passed away in 2003. Ter Saami in the Murmansk region has about 30 speakers, all age 50 and above. The Kildin Saami has about 300 active speakers. Likewise the Skolt Saami has around 300 speakers on the Finish side of the border and only a handful of old people left on the Russian side (speaking the special Russian dialect of Skolt).

But Michaels comments make me rethink my melancholic impression of Skolt Saami as a dying language. Infinity is a powerful concept to bring into any reflection. If every speakers vocabulary is potentially infinite or to be regarded as a �part� of infinity (that in itself would be infinite), then a dying language is not ceasing to exist by slowly shrinking in size as one would expect (due to forgetfulness, language shift or some other kind of deterioration of the collective memory). It is still present and alive in its vibrant infinity even with only one speaker left on earth (or maybe two? Does not a language need a listener? Or maybe it is sufficient with only one subject speaking to him- or herself? I guess that would be the perfect communication: The last speaker of a dead language muttering to himself).

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #2

2008-04-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

The beauty of totality.

By now I probably own the largest library of Skolt Saami to Finish language dictionaries in the world. Except for a few Skolt - German ones from the 1800 century that I found visiting the Humbolt University Library in Berlin last month, I have gathered all I could find.

The sum total is 4 books and 1 bad photocopy from the 80s.

They all vary greatly in size and quality, and I have tested my way through them all in the hopes of finding a candidate for scanning and optical character recogniction.

Finally today, a breakthrough. Mosnikoffs and Sammallahtis dictionary from 88 seems to have all the necessary ingredients: the copy is in strong black and white ink, the �c� does not look like an �e� (who would have thought that this would be the greatest of challenges for the digitizing community?) and all the special letters of the Skolt Sami language are possible to separate from each other. The ? from the d, the ? from the k, the ? from the ?, the � and �, and � and �, not to mention the � � ? and ?. (Even your browser probably do not support these characters...)

I am starting to get a close relationship with these characters. Their corresponding sounds roll silently in my mouth like liquorice while I stare at the enlarged scans. Teaching the computer to understand all of them takes patience, but gives a rare glimpse into the microscopic world of the letter. The shapes of the characters are blown up and supersized until I see every molecule of ink filling up the topography of the paper.

THE SKOLT SAAMI LANGUAGE MEMORY PROJECT, entry #1

2008-04-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

I feel my eyes drying up. I am lost in a desert of broken letters. Literarily.

Struck by a sudden premonition I see my next two weeks before me: working day and night proofreading a dictionary that translates between two languages, neither of which I understand a single word.

Today has been a technical research day. How to digitise a dictionary. How to wield the computing power to my needs. How to teach a blind computer to read.

The first goal: to build a database of the Skolt Saami language. A dying language in the arctic regions of northern Norway, Finland and Russia.

The next goal: To travel to northern Finland and collect samples of all the words of the Skolt Saami language. To film one informant per letter of the alphabet reading all the words.

The final goal: To build an art installation for the new Skolt Saami museum in Neiden, Norway - an exhibition of the totality of a dying language. At the push of a button, one by one of the words will be given to the visitors. One word each, given as a task - for the visitor to take responsibility for and remember for the future.

Goodiepals 11. time

2008-01-04T02:28:00.000-08:00

For correct viewing please play the audio file named �maved_soundtrack� along with this video sequence�

USB - UNITED STATES OF BARENTS

2007-08-09T04:20:00.000-07:00

What do people in the Barents Region have in common - other than the notion of living on the periphery? What happens now when the region experiences a potential change from periphery to center? Why is everybody speaking English to each other? Is the opening of the first IKEA store in the region a major event in the history of the Barents?

USB is a performance that investigates these and other questions; questions dealing with local, global and northern identity, the power of definition, borders, similarities and differences in the Arctic, and the love of IKEA.

Welcome to the brave new world of the United States of Barents!

Amund Sj�lie Sveen is an artist and percussionist from northern Norway who developed USB (United States of Barents) originally after taking part in the artistic research project Connection Barents in June 2006. USB was premiered in the Barents Spektakel-festival, in Kirkenes, January 2007. An Internet version of the USB presentation was made especially for this Region in focus.

via LabforCulture

A HOLE AT THE POLE

2007-06-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

This time next year, Kentucky based physicist and futurist Brooks Agnew hopes to board the commercially owned Russian icebreaker Yamal in the port of Murmansk, and to sail into the polar sea just beyond Canada's Arctic islands...

Mr. Agnew is the latest in a long line of people to peddle the nutty, yet persistent, theory that humans live on the surface of a hollow planet, in which two undiscovered openings, near the North and South poles, connect the outer Earth with an interior realm...

While he insists the journey has a genuine scientific purpose, Mr. Agnew also says the expedition will include several experts in meditation, mythology and UFOs, as well as a team of documentary filmmakers...

If the polar opening isn't there, the voyage "will still make an outstanding documentary," he promises.

more info at the national post

A VISITOR FROM CUBA

2007-05-22T02:52:00.000-07:00

April 63, needing a break after the bay of pigs invasion, Fidel Castro travelled to Murmansk. Here he is seen visiting the local pioneers.

MURMANSK 2007: Distribution of the Sensible

2007-05-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

Images of buildings and non-buildings in Murmansk, Russia taken in may 2007 by Espen Sommer Eide

KOLA RING - MAX YOUR MOBILE

2006-07-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

Rural Readers present their downloadable ringtone service. Choose a ringtone from the Kola peninsula to max your mobile.

HERZOG ON THE OBSCENITY OF THE JUNGLE

2006-06-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

A LETTER FROM DR. GUBERMAN

2006-05-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

Some news of the existence of the legendary dr. Guberman recently caught our attention. Here is a picture of dr. Guberman by the Superdeep hole in Kola. He has just drilled the first hole of what was to become the deepest man-made hole in the world (12262 meters). Also included is a letter from the doctor with an original Superdeep stamp. As the research director of the Barents Institute, Urban Wr�kberg notes: "dr. Guberman is for the underworld, what Juri Gagarin is for space".

ENGLISH MOSQUITO HUNTING

2006-05-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

An english version of the mosquito base is now available. It also includes extra material in the form of a "examen culicum" page where a swarm phenomenon can be studied further.

Visit the english page here.

MYGGBASEN COMING HOME

2006-01-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

The myggbase will be presented at the Barents Spektakel festival in Kirkenes on 2. february. It will also be a mini presentation at the opening of the Barents Institute on the 1.february.

MYGGBASE LAUNCHED

2005-09-12T15:15:00.000-07:00

We are proud to announce the launch of the latest Rural Readers project today! It is called the Myggbase (Mosquito base) and is a collection of Mosquitoes from Finnmark and Calcutta, and stories connected to them and an expedition diary.

Myggbase is part of the project "digitale fortellinger" (digital narratives) initiated by PNEK and NRK (the national broadcasting company in Norway). It is for now in norwegian language only, but an english version is coming soon!

Here is the link to the base:

ulyd.bek.no/mb/myggbase.html

and here is the link to the digital narratives project:

nrk.no/ulyd

Welcome to the launch party with a special mosquito performance by the rural readers team at Spasibar in Oslo Tuesday 13. september at 19.00.

FINNMARK AS NORTH BENGAL?

2004-12-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

Finally ruralreaders.net got a correspondent in Calcutta. Lulak Hindibargh is a former librarian and now our first reader on the subcontinent. In his first letter to RR he reports that the Chief-Minister of West-Bengal may consider Finnmark as North-Bengal in the future. 1st letter

SKOGFOSS PAGE UPDATED

2004-10-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

The Skogfoss reading has been updated to include a short story of the meeting with Abraham and Agnes Randa, two friendly inhabitants of the forests of Pasvik.

A BENGALI QUESTION

2004-10-29T04:51:00.000-07:00

Recently a Bengali reader, Sri Laral Mukherjee of Calcutta, wrote RR an email. He asks if ruralreaders.net could take a closer look at films made in tollywood (made in calcutta) and bollywood: Can any scripts of these two great traditions be considered as rural readings or not? Mr Mukherjee especially wonders about the refined dancescenes - especially in the films of Shah Rukh Khan (right). Almost all of these scenes are imploded into rural landscapes even if the rest of the story is situated in the middle of a city. Mr. Mukherjee wonders how this is possible. A good question.

MANY YEARS BEYOND

2004-10-28T07:01:00.000-07:00

Sarada Devi and her fellowsaintfriend Sri Ramakrishna suddenly appeared in Calcutta. This happened in the middle of one of our rural readings in Cal last week. We understood this to be a consequense of the extensive devotion of goddess Kali the last weeks. These two saints lived at the turn of the last century and have been residing in the great beyond for many years. The incident was also reported by many Indian dailies. It happened at a Kali-altar in Hazra Road. Later, the bengali daily The Statesman could report that Sri Ramakrishna and Sarada Devi were only look-a-likes. Ruralreaders.net will report more later on.