Output details

GOMERA

Gomera is a single channel 10-minute film premiered at the 17th Sydney Biennale by invitation of its Director, David Elliott (12 May-1 August 2010). The film is one result of Gregory’s long-term research project into the relationship between language, culture and environment. The film focuses on El Silbo, the whistled language of La Gomera, part of Spain‘s Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa. By the late 1990‘s the language was all but dead - it‘s existence threatened by its association with illiteracy, the lasting impact of Franco‘s language policy, and availability of mobile phones.

Supported by a NESTA Fellowship (2002–2005), Gregory‘s initial research began with familiarisation with linguistic theory and issues of language. She then worked with the Endangered Language Foundation and other specialists worldwide in the field of language loss and its impact to understand wider social and cultural issues. Gregory gathered primary material for the film through two research visits to Gomera. The first, in 2004, was to witness and research El Silbo. During the second visit in 2005 she gathered further material through photographs, film and interviews, and by working with a school community.

Gregory’s film employs an aesthetically seductive style to explore the close relationship between El Silbo - a language that carries further than the spoken word - and the surrounding impenetrable landscape. Gregory shows this unique and indigenous language - once a source of ridicule and shame –to have become a marker of tradition and of cultural pride.

Gregory was an invited presenter at the Biennale Panel Discussion entitled ‘Distance, Diaspora and Aesthetics in African and Caribbean Art’. The Biennale attracted a record number of over 517,000 visitors and was widely reviewed.

Catalogue: ‘17th Sydney Biennale, Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age’ ISBN: 9780646527949.