Taalbarrière

Artist book
auto-editie
68 paginas, A4 formaat, color, soft cover
25 €

The book Taalbarrière brings together reproductions of a drawing's series linked to an audio creation about the border and the language barrier in Belgium through the eyes of secondary school pupils who are learning the language of the other community, French or Dutch.

Gesteunde door CultureCultuur, het Cultureel Samenwerkingsakkoord tussen de Vlaamse en de Franse Gemeenschap

"In Taalbarrière cultural, psychological, socio-economic, and geographic determinations of the linguistic communities come to light, at the same time as errors, hesitations, fillers, accents, and loanwords make the Dutch and the French languages come to life. Both appear as charming and familiar, and the idea of a ‘correct’ Dutch or a ‘correct’ French, as well as of a purely Flemish and purely Walloon identity, is questioned. By ridiculing the schoolbook, and by putting together voices and accents from both parts of Belgium, Taalbarrière suggests that we should embrace the Belgian accents and hybridizations, such as the beautiful Brusseleir, rather than aspire to purity.

This is why the title ‘Taalbarrière’ was aptly chosen: it renders the ‘language barrier’, which divides people linguistically, and in Belgium also geographically, economically, and politically, but it is nothing else than an amalgam, a hybrid, a contraction of a Dutch (taal) and a French (barrière) word.

Julie Van Der Wielen