el proyecto humboldt

The Humboldt Project
A cinematographic and linguistic undertaking that follows in the footsteps of Wilhelm von Humboldt as he walked through the Basque Country in 1801. It conducts participative research into the Basque language in relation to individual memories and the history of the landscape. The result will be a handmade 16-mm film lasting 30 minutes together with an artist’s book with text, drawings and photos.

The original walk
Completed by Wilhelm von Humboldt, a German cultural and linguistic researcher who travelled around the Basque Country in 1801. He spent one month walking from village to village to study the Basque language and its cultural contexts. He was particularly interested in the relationship between the language and the landscape. Humboldt was a pioneer in this area and is considered the founder of modern Basque studies.

Research into the Basque language
An interactive part of the project. The objective is to learn the language through encounters with Basque people who I come across and get to know while walking the route taken by Wilhelm von Humboldt. I try to ask people about Basque and especially about their favourite or most interesting words which have some association with an experience, a memory or a more personal feeling. Each word that I record and learn in this way provides its own unique background insofar as it is part of a cultural and social context.

The film and the artist’s book
Anyone who contributes a Basque word is invited to record it directly into the film emulsion, like in skin or tree bark. The landscape images will be manually transformed into graphic sound images in celluloid. Words representing objects such as tools or equipment are recorded as drawings, just as Humboldt did in his travel journal. Every individual memory, experience or feeling which is linked to a word will be told and explained by each collaborator and documented with an audio recording and a text. All texts, drawings and a selection of stills from the film will be compiled at the end into an artist’s book.