Gibberish

Gibberish is a video art piece that attempts to interrupt and convey meaning using nonsense language. However, in its pure form, gibberish tends to simply sit in the same place artistically and not develop in the viewer’s mind. It is after all gibberish. In George Barber’s new video, the artist gets around this by incorporating elements of English language or ‘sense’ which are inserted amidst nonsense language. The effect of this is that Gibberish begins or seems to be making some kind of meaning, yet most of the recognisable language spoken is also ludicrous and spontaneously thought up. The piece seems to start around the subject of lost suitcases at an airport, and over 5 minutes develops through various scenarios into being about a loved kitten and the end of the world.

Gibberish is fundamentally about the voice as an object and as a presence. Once sense has been taken away, and the performers merely make sounds that we apprehend and make familiar to ourselves as ‘foreign language’. Without sense we are left with mannerisms, tone, hand and eye movements and, of course, our physical reaction to the speaker’s voice quality and tone. Language is a logical structure, generating meaning in building blocks. Here we sense building blocks but have to improvise and generate our own sense to get by. Like listening to someone speaking a foreign language, we have to ‘insert’ bits, fill the gaps. We struggle to predict what the problems might be that the speaker is telling us about, we look for hints in the voice.

Yet, in this piece of video art, there is pleasure in realising that the voices are ‘non-signifying’. The actions, sound and presence of each performer’s voice, pleasurably fire off ideas in our heads as we scrabble to understand. Nobody ever thinks of the voice as merely vibrations of air travelling from someone’s mouth to our ear; we are experiencing a person. Gibberish plays with these natural brain functions, and is not boring; the viewer always feels they are on the cusp of understanding something and that all will be made clear eventually. We feel we will get the ‘missing half’ later on.

When somebody speaks we feel that we are getting immediate access to them – a direct line to the type of person they are and what they are about all in one thing – their voice. We know without thinking what noises mean by the way they are made, their bite, attack, sonority, friendliness or aggression. Yet more often than not, the speaker hides behind manners, says precisely what they don’t mean, and holds ‘things’ back, precisely through the careful use of language. Gibberish attempts to play with these elements and creates various scenarios where people seem to be conversing and communicating but really it is the viewer’s natural habits of comprehension being messed around with. Normal service will resume.