ANCHORAGE | BABEL IN REVERSE

Located at Anchorage Place, Brooklyn, From Spring 2023 through summer 2023

Anchorage | Babel in Reverse is a site-specific installation by artists Joseph Morris and Owen Trueblood in collaboration with the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA) that features the voices of hundreds of speakers of endangered languages spoken throughout the city of New York.

Using hanging electronic speakers, the artists have dedicated each speaker to a single audio recording of a language documented by the ELA and supplemented with recordings sourced through the Virtual Language Observatory. As people approach the installation, the sound is a whispering babel, with hundreds of recorded voices speaking hundreds of languages. However, as one walks beneath the speakers, the babel fades, and individual voices and languages are heard. As participants move through the installation, the speakers fade in and out to highlight individual languages, allowing visitors to hear the voices of New Yorkers reciting personal stories, poems, and fables of languages we’re accustomed to hearing as well as the sound of languages that NYC is expected to lose in a generation or two.

Generously supported by the Downtown Brooklyn Public Art + Placemaking Fund, The Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) from Wave Farm, and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts

To view and listen to the full audio from interviews sourced by The Endangered Language Alliance, please see their interactive map, Languages of New York City, which also contains links to videos of the selected language.

Contact Joseph Morris for more information or to support and present his work.