እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi, About the observer

Given their shared sensitivities regarding language and translation, we put Kedist Coppejans in touch with the artist Lisa Spilliaert. Lisa completed her master’s degree in photography at KASK & Conservatorium in 2013. They met and asked each other questions.

Through text, photography and film, እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi explores the artist’s evolving relationship with a lost language, not merely as a tool for communication, but as material, structure, and subject. Words appear as fragments, traces, captions, interruptions, or absences; images become forms of reading; while film unfolds as a space where meaning is continuously constructed and undone. Moving between the visual and the verbal, the work questions how language shapes perception, memory, intimacy, and identity.

LISA SPILLIAERT
One of my earliest memories is of a game I made up to try and stop myself thinking. At first it was exciting: I said “Stop, stop, stop…” out loud in my head, but it turned out to be an impossible task and, as a result, frightening. I was standing on a university campus where we used to play. The concrete ground was covered with berries that had fallen from a tree. I found myself in a silent, tornado-like state of imagination.

Meanwhile, I do this spontaneously throughout my daily life, in a way that still isn’t calming. I realise that I haven’t thought in words for a very long time. I take in what I see, and with that come vague references to other images, or a haze, sometimes a sort of amoeba. Do other people do this too? These formless primal shapes might come quite close to linguistic images. I recognise that in your work, and you make it shareable.

KEDIST COPPEJANS
People often focus on how an artist creates a piece of work, but I don’t actually think that’s relevant. What’s more important is: does the work (which I have now completed and passed on) move someone (in whatever way)? Does it make people think? Is my work relevant?

I have handed over my work. So I don’t want it to be about me now, but about you – about how you ask yourself questions, question your own assumptions, explore, but also find strength.

እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi is about the importance of language in expressing a feeling. I wonder whether people who are unable to express their sadness or joy, disappointment or hope, are regarded as ‘fully human’. And if you are not regarded as ‘fully human’, can you regard yourself as fully human?

Or do you lack the language to ask yourself that question? It’s as if language is indispensable to being a person. What if the only words you can really shout are ‘Stop, stop, stop’?

LS
Is my work relevant? Whilst studying at KASK & Conservatorium, I often heard the teachers say: “We like your work, but that’s because we know you.” Personal ingredients that resonate on a universal level can form a strong foundation for a piece of work. For me, it still remains a guessing game: what will be the outcome of my “personal” effort?

I know what it’s like not to be regarded as ‘complete’ by society. For me, that’s also linked to the feeling that I’m still an immature person. As a teenager, I had a great thirst for self-knowledge. By being so preoccupied with absorbing the new language in Belgium at the age of seventeen, I lost sight of growing up. In Japan, I catch myself identifying with teenagers; my (linguistic) development seems to be on hold there time and again. In both languages – and therefore in both societies – I feel powerless, immature and rebellious.

Language is pretty crucial if you want to be ‘someone’. When I came to Belgium, I was convinced that the Dutch language had to become a part of me, like a piece that was still missing. Until then, I’d been regarded in Japan as a Belgian girl. In Belgium, I thought, I’d finally just be a Belgian girl. But in Bruges, I didn’t fit in there either. Unexpectedly, I was given a new label: the Japanese girl – an identity I’d long since given up in Japan. Languages were impossible to grasp from my state of confusion and disappointment: who to be, what to choose. However banal it all sounds now: these things were of vital importance to me. I now think back to that sickening feeling, my body wanting to throw up the languages.

The act of giving up, accepting and repulsing identities is closely linked to the concept of language, yet it is anything but a simple matter to come to terms with. For me, this asymmetry is explored in እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi. In the film, a language is made tangible in all its complex forms, whilst at the same time standing out so beautifully from the rest in all its simplicity.

I feel at ease with translations. It feels like a space where I can be free. I like to read two books at the same time, in different languages. Translating something literally in everyday life has a playful quality to it, and I really enjoy it. Sometimes I end up confusing myself or the person I’m talking to, but that confusion gives rise to surprise. Watching or making films gives me a similar sense of freedom.

I found myself in tears after the first minute of the film እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi. It consists of a static landscape with what appears (due to the glitches in the sound) to be a long-distance call in which someone is trying to pronounce her own name under the guidance of someone on the other end of the line. I learnt how to pronounce my name ‘correctly’ almost twenty years ago. I’m surprised that this short clip moved me. I thought I’d become desensitised or ‘too strong’ for that by now.

LS
The film continues for another ten minutes. As the still and moving images alternate across two fixed frames, I listen to the narration. This alternation made me ponder the singular and plural in our grammar, and how something so abstract can shape a person. After nearly twenty years, I still find it a difficult concept, especially when I’m writing. I often find it a super­fluous rule, but it also shapes me by making me think twice about it every time: do I include it/me or not?

The narratives in እሺ እሺ Eshi Eshi sometimes resemble translations of one another, or at other times seem neither translated nor subtitled. All of this takes place within the intuitive, precise editing. Whilst watching, I felt repelled in a welcoming way. And I felt at home. It wasn’t a contradiction to feel welcome whilst there was still a sense of distance. Perhaps it is necessary to embrace that sense of repulsion from the outset if you wish to connect.