John Wynne

Sound artist John Wynne talks about Anspayaxw, his work based on speakers of Gitxsanimaax, an endangered indigenous language in northern British Columbia, Canada.The linguistic diversity of the world is under threat: it is estimated that between fifty and ninety per cent of the world's six thousand languages will be gone by the end of this century. Losing a language means that the potential complexity of our understanding of the world is reduced, and the domination of a few global languages is no more likely to foster peace and stability than replacing biologically diverse rainforests with huge swathes of single crops is to improve the global ecosystem.

In the framework of the exhibition HLYSNAN: The Notion and Politics of Listening.