TIERISCHES WERDEN

Tierisches Werden is a video-letter that explores the limits, and possibilities, of expression beyond language. Built around a personal letter read aloud in German by a synthetic voice, the piece unfolds through two central ideas: the content of the letter itself, centered on pure feeling, desire, and intention; and the historical and cultural systems of non-verbal communication: runes, sigils, and psychic symbols, that attempt to transcend the spoken word.

The letter expresses a yearning to move beyond the boundaries of verbal language: “I want to transcend the barriers of language. The pure feeling. The intention. The desire.” Yet its message is deliberately obscured, delivered in a foreign tongue, spoken by a disembodied, generic text-to-speech system. Subtitles appear distorted or unreadable, blurring the line between word and image. Meaning becomes sensation.

Visually, the piece is punctuated with flashes of esoteric symbols, runes, sigils, and psychic crosses, referencing Thee Psychick Bible by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, evoking ancient systems that communicate not through explanation, but invocation. These symbols act as fragments of a forgotten or imagined language, one that privileges intuition over comprehension.

The sonic dimension is equally evocative: the mechanical hum of a Super 8 projector merges with Daisy Bell (IBM, 1961), the first song ever sung by a computer. These auditory choices reinforce a sense of estrangement, replacing human presence with machine memory, distancing the message to paradoxically bring us closer to its essence.

By stripping away familiar linguistic cues and human warmth, Tierisches Werden constructs a new space for communication, affective, symbolic, and unfiltered. It proposes a becoming, an animal becoming, where sensation precedes structure, and the inexpressible finds a body through image, sound, and symbol.