A Linguistic Bestiary of Oyster Island

0 Be the first to favourite this.

Walking piece details

Oyster Island, a tiny speck of rock in New York Harbor that juts out of the water to become an island only during unusually low tides, is the setting for a surreal sound walk at the outermost edges of ecological possibility and speculative linguistics. Once arrived at this Atlantis-like location, you are invited to consider what new languages might emerge if humans were to start transforming into the island’s native fauna of red beard sponges, razor clams, and moon snails. But this premise is a sly and unsparing provocation about our rapidly shrinking coastline in the wake of global warming. A parable about human violence, rising oceans, and the strangeness of our mortal coil, this journey of a few feet down the length of the island aims to utterly upend our cherished notions of our own humanity.