This contribution explores the language of trauma and non-human languages as a way to move beyond the limitations of recounting a traumatic experience through human language. Processed through a practice-based inquiry grounded in fiction, this article follows the creative process of my manuscript Un árbol el bosque una vez (A Tree the Forest Once),whose protagonist, Nïm, a bio-sonification artist, finds that normative grammar fails to name her reality after being a victim of abuse. By seeking refuge in an art residency, Nïm finds in plants’ communication systems a new way of articulating her own experience.
Situated within contemporary debates on artistic research, the contribution departs from writing as a methodological laboratory in which linguistic structures are hybridised, fractured and reinvented, exploring friction, crazed syntax (Barthes), non-linear narration (Gómez Gabriel) and nonhuman languages—rhythmic, chemical, cryptic—to challenge anthropocentric ways of knowing (Haraway). Through selected textual fragments and critical reflection, the article proposes language as a practice of shapeshifting and knowledge production—one that destabilises hierarchical models of communication and opens speculative pathways toward linguistic transformation.
Published in APRIA JOURNAL: Shapeshifting: On the Uncanny, the Monstrous and the Ever-Changing — Editorial
