Embedded Language

Embedded Language

Installation / 2 Channel video / Headsets / 19min. / 2013

At an International Defence Exhibition in Poland, I interviewed, in English, an executive from a Polish arms manufacturing firm. I then transposed this filmed interview in a Dubbing-studio in Montreal, Canada.
Dubbing artist and actor Jean-Luc Montminy (who is the French-Canadian voice for actors including Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington) dubbed the interview into French in collaboration with a studio director and a sound engineer, as would be done for a motion picture production.
I captured this moment of language and discourse deconstruction and reconstruction with my camera. The moment at which an arms engineer is given another language and other words by a dubbing artist and the technical infrastructure at a cinema becomes visible here. This process can possibly lead to questions about language and power and their (in)visibility, and also brings in the issue of armed politics in relation to film and the film industry.
The installation comprises two synchronized screens and the sound on headphones.

Filmed in Cinélume film studio in Montreal.