J U D I T H   W E S T E R V E L D

Mukalap is based on an unique audio recording from the Anthony Traill Khoisan Collection that captures a spoken message from a man named Mukalap in the Khoe langiage !ora. In his mother tongue !ora Mukalap calls on an European audience to just for once listen to his beautiful language and to him. The message was played in 1938 during the Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences in Ghent. Mukalap's message is not only an urgent appeal for recognition, he also asked the audience to respond and send him a message in return. No trace of a reply can be found. Within the work Westerveld responds to his request after all. As the last known !ora speaker that linguists worked with died in 2013, there seems to be no one left to learn the language from. Speaking in Dutch, English, Afrikaans, as well as fragments of !ora, the dialogue between Westerveld and Mukalap unfolds through a multitude of languages and translations through which the legacies of colonialism resound.

Credits
The audio recording of Mukalap's message is used by permission of copyright holder, the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Translation of the !ora recording by Wilfrid Haacke and Eliphas Eiseb, published in ‘Extinct South African Khoisan Languages’ by Anthony Traill and the Department of Linguistics, University of the Witwatersrand in 1997.
Assistance matching the translation to the spoken !ora message by Bradley van Sitters.

Live performance during the ICA Live Art Festival 2018,
Hiddigh campus, University of Cape Town, South Africa

Audio installation at Nest, The Hague for the exhibition
Language is the only homeland, 2018
Photo credit: Jhoeko photography