© Julia Bielefeld
© Julia Bielefeld
You can form beautiful sentences is an exploration of the terms human, language, speaking. Language is deeply anchored in humanity and helps us shape our reality. What tension arises when this connection is disturbed and both speech processing as well as production are no longer fully functional?
People with impaired language help us to access this topic. The inability of a person to fully use and understand speech is called aphasia and occurs as a result of brain damage. Neuroscience has a long history of using such functional failures to identify and map structures and processes in the brain.
Based on conversations with aphasics, speech therapists and competent persons of various disciplines, an observational, cinematic study emerged that provides an insight into the intimate process of language acquisition and its underlying mechanisms. For this purpose, the conditions were reversed and the range of sharpness between healthy and impaired language was reconsidered. The main focus of the work is on the active role of speaking. Here, the disturbing moment becomes a gain in knowledge - in the search for a word, in the vague probing of sounds, cautious and searching movements of the mouth, semantic reforming of words or explosive discharges of sound. Simultaneously, the question arises of how language and speaking endeavors affect the viewer. What reactions and moods arise when something happens contrary to the linguistic expectation?
Julia Bielefeld was born in Frankfurt am Main. After finishing her bachelor’s degree in communication design at Mainz University, she furthered her studies in the area from 2014–2018 at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe. She creates narrative works at the intersection of natural science and humanities, which often bridge into the fictive. Her focus is on the human constitution of reality. This is expressed mostly through the medium of print media, where the substantive condition of the medium comes to the fore. In her creative practice and artistic inquiry, research forms the basis for playful approaches and aesthetic design.