Attached is the word document with an evaluation and contextualisation of this project.

lost Languages

LeWitt’s definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
“ In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. – Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art”, Artforum, June 1967. ”

This unit, spacialised practices, is about thinking about the audience you are trying to reach with your work, and how best to get your message to them. It seems to me that the best way to get people interested in a work of art or an idea is to get them to participate. Since people who speak foreign languages are my target audience for this project, and they are likely to be geographically dispersed, e-mail seems an obvious choice for reaching them and also for getting them involved in the project.

A saying in the mail art movement is “senders receive,” meaning that one must not expect mail art to be sent to them unless they are also actively participating in the movement. Everyone who participates in the project indirectly by forwarding the message or directly and creatively by translating the phrase will know about the website where the project will be displayed, and can easily be contacted and invited to view it.

I am asking for people to translate the following sentence into their own language and send it to
saved@lostlanguages.net, with the name of the language in the subject line. The sentence is:

“I am saving my language.”

Predictions by linguists estimate that as many as 90% of the world’s total languages will be threatened with extinction in the next century.
The idea is to produce a statement about how sad it would be to lose the many endangered languages in the world.

If you or anybody you know speaks another first language, particularly people who speak languages with a small number of speakers, it would be great if you could participate and forward this mail asking them to contribute too.

The project will be eventually be displayed at http://www.lostlanguages.net