Faraway Voices
Faraway Voices – spoken poetry in every language
In this webvideo-project Amsterdam is seeking contact with all 6000 languages on earth. From Chinese to endangered languages, every language gets one entry only. Every poem is a spoken word performance in the ‘native’ language: a subtitled video.
Everyone is invited to help search and Google for contemporary performance poets and storytellers in languages that are missing. This project investigates how World Wide the Web really is.The project will grow with new video’s each week during the year of Amsterdam World Book Capital 23 april 2008 – 22 april 2009. For Unesco 2008 is the international ‘year of the mother tongue’.
You can help this project grow. How?
You can ’search & google’ for contemporary poets in small languages. Preferably young and energetic performers with multimedia possibilities.
You can search and contact linguists, local institutes, regional literary projects or adventurous travellers with cameras to bring back a video in an endangered, small or very regional language. Or maybe you are one of those persons yourself.
You can suggest the best special person to represent the three big languages: English, Chinese and Spanish.
Instructions for participants
A few general instructions for participating:
FILMING
- every poem has to start with the title EARTH (all spoken in your own language of course)
- film yourself before a nice background or place in a short clip (between 30 seconds and 90 seconds, so around 1 minute)
- you can hold the camera yourself, put it on tripod or let someone else film you
…(the two next instructions are only for the non-slammer participants 
- hang the written poem with tape on the wall or on the camera or let somenone hold it so it will look like you know it by heart
- perform/read/speak out loud or whispering or whatever is your style, but try to make it a vivid and clear performance for the internet audience
- make a few extra shots of the direct surroundings in relation to the lyrics or maybe add some photos or artwork I can use in the editing or edit it yourself
(a tree, animals, landscape, the house, close-ups of feet or hands or eyes or your city or whatever)
WRITING
- write the poem word by word in your original language
- write a translation in English
- email these results to me
- I will edit, subtitle and publish
- If you want a link to your other work/homepage/magazine or emailadress let me know
UPLOAD
Shoot the video in the best possible quality (the video already present on the site is 430×344 – Flash video encoded with On2 VP6 1200 kbps).
Please let me know how you will get the video to me:
a) you can upload it to my server or to your own from where I can download them
b) you can send a DV tape or a memorycard or cdrom to my adress
c) you can upload them through a special site that sends large files
d) any other way you can think of: like performing live with Skype and a webcam or using Youtube.
I will sent you my adress or the webpage where you can upload the results later, when you let me know you are finished.
Videoformat depending on your camera and computersoftware. It can be .wmv .mov .avi .divx .mpeg .flv .3gp etc.
The higher quality the better since I will maybe do some editing with your extra footage.
Colofon
Faraway Voices started on Earth Day 2008 at the beginning of the Unesco event: “Amsterdam World Book Capital 2008/2009″. It is an initiative by W. Bello. Together with designer J. Disch he made a video website for Dutch Poetry Slammers 3 years ago (www.slamsphere.nl)
Now there is this follow up project to show the interesting and unlimited world of languages, worldpoetry, storytelling and earthviews. A mixed zone full of random contacts about languages and the internet.
The project is kindly funded by Stimuleringsfonds Nederlandse Culturele Omroepproducties, Digital Pioneers and Hivos.
info and contact: fv@dds.nl