Isabella Lee Arturo

Words Stuck Inside The Mouth

Video-performance, 2017

Image 1: View of the installation at the National University of Colombia, 2017.

The project “Words Stuck Inside The Mouth” is a multiple projection installation consisting of two conceptual parts: the first part includes performance pieces that expose my body to the inability to speak, with the aim of understanding the limits of language through my body. The second part of the project consists of short documentaries and video poetry on autobiographical subjects.  Ultimately, I started this project with the idea that my own struggle with words is a fertile field for aesthetic creation. In other words, this project is an ode to my stuttering.

Image 2: View of the installation at the National University of Colombia, 2017.

Image 3: View of the installation at the National University of Colombia, 2017.

Image 4: View of the installation at the National University of Colombia, 2017.

I realise how difficult it is to delve deeply in the paradox of speaking about the unspeakable, to define something that wants to escape definition, that when it takes the form of a word, it loses its essence. Writing about the incommunicable has been tortuous; nevertheless, I am sitting here, trying to give form to these words. And what do I have to say?

This project, which I named “Words Stuck Inside The Mouth” has a meaning that overflows from this page. The ineffable resonates beyond everything that can be shown; its echo reaches a non-verbal reality that composes me. A reality that approaches an intimate dimension. I will try to narrate this echo here, even if it is only a small fraction of its totality. To put it in simpler words: the most significant results – those that affect my intimacy – are left out of this text. I am trying to condense on this page a multitude of experiences that escape the linguistic order, which nevertheless compose me.

The previous section is part of the research that accompanies the project “Words Stuck Inside The Mouth” (2017), which main theme is the limitations of verbal language in human communication. Specifically, the project explores babbling as a phenomenon that materialises the condition of the body in its constant struggle with words. This work is born from the daily difficulty I feel in my verbal communication, and is therefore a desire to observe my body in that vulnerable state: when I drown in words.