Sima

Cities and Memory - remixing the world

"This piece begins with a beautiful recording of the Ushuaia River in Lapataia, Tierra del Fuego, made by Raúl del Mestre. The peaceful play of the water over rocks and stones gradually gives way to various manipulations of the river sound (using pitch shifting, looping, reversing and sampling) evoking some of the tensions between this natural waterway and the rapidly accelerating changes in the world around it.
"European colonization looms large and brutal in the history of Tierra del Fuego, not least in the loss of its native languages. The UN estimates that one indigenous language dies every two weeks, and says: “When indigenous languages are under threat, so too are indigenous peoples themselves. The threat is the direct consequence of colonial practices that result in the decimation of indigenous peoples, their cultures and languages. Through policies of assimilation, dispossession of lands, and discriminatory laws and actions, indigenous languages in all regions face the threat of extinction.”
"Set against the sounds of the Ushuaia River is a message in Yaghan, a language that used to be widely spoken here. This greeting was recorded for the first Congress on Indigenous Languages in Chile in 2010, by Cristina Calderón, a Chilean ethnographer, craftswoman, writer and cultural activist. Cristina Calderón passed away in 2022, and was the last known native speaker of Yaghan.
"You can hear Cristina Calderón’s full message at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIL6xzGmvvA, and read more about language rights from the UN at https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/04/Indigenous-Languages.pdf
"The title of this piece, Sima, is the Yaghan word for water."
Ushuaia river reimagined by Lucy Cathcart Frödén.