officialese explores the ways in which official languages become a tool to protect the ways things are. The work looks at how official languages create violence, assimilate and discriminate against the speakers of non-official languages. The installation presents a work-in-progress research based on real and fictional uses of official languages, in state and social level, in and outside the artworlds.
The installation at Kunstraum ZHDK will present notes, readings, annotations and images from the officialese lab and its collaborators. The documentation of the research and in-situ contributions will be presented online at betulaksu.com/officialese as they happen between November 26th – December 6th, 2022. Following the exhibition, there will be a publication about the personal, anonymous and collective stories shared throughout the research.
