The countries that I inhabit spread out like stars, in archipelagos

Les pays que j’habite s’étoilent en archipels draws on my ongoing research in the Canary Islands where I will form an intergenerational whistling choir in La Gomera island. Collectively, we will compose a manifesto written and performed in Silbo gomero, an ancient Canarian whistling language. The final score of the whistling manifesto will then be taught to the Solidarity choirs of each city it will be performed in. The transmission of the resulting manifesto is similar to the way canary birds are taught to sing. Exclusively passed on to militant women, the transmission of the manifest takes on a ritualistic form of struggle following the tradition of (eco)feminism.

This episode unfolds as a constellation or archipelago spanning multiple media. From the dramatised and acoustic writing of Frantz Fanon, Yasmina Reggad moves through the geopoetics of Edouard Glissant. Considering postcolonial critical ecofeminist theories in/and the phonoscene, the performative work engages with and addresses the history of women’s participation in liberation movements. Looking at the El Silbo language as a territory in which a coloniality of power is articulated, the piece also examines the politics of (non-verbal) languages.