Hiding in the comfort of digital distraction, mainlining cell phone soma, losing the signal between stations I look up at my fellow travelers. The vulnerability is palpable; heads down, eyes averted, riding together in hushed silence. There’s no denying our glorious diversity, but that pride comes in whispers now. It feels safer not to be seen.
Relieved to find that your family name, your country of origin, your political party, your religion, your gender, your identity is not on today’s casualty list? They’ve got us sifting through their justifications for injustice, searching for something to stave off uncertainty. They want you to count yourself lucky…
How do we move past these polarization narratives that manipulate us into thinking of our sister and brother as “other”? How can we begin to recognize shared values if we can’t even speak the same language? Coming into 2024, these thoughts weighed heavily on me: the demonization and scapegoating of immigrants would only increase in an election year.
I was drafting a proposal for a participatory public art project at the time, one that would take place in three different New York neighborhoods. The project would be in multiple languages, but it was important to me that it engage participants through multiple modes of perception as well (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.), allowing people to access and internalize the work where they are, rather than where or how they are expected to be.
From my proposal:
Lingo Bingo offers an opportunity for neighbors from the community to bridge language and cultural barriers: to speak, hear, and understand the “voice of the other.” The project draws on the vernacular visual language and play mechanics of the game bingo, replacing the numbers with words and phrases in multiple languages to create a low-risk, playful setting for participants of diverse cultural backgrounds to discover shared values.
The site-specific iterations feature languages representative of the local community. Participants take turns picking a word/phrase from their board, in any language, reading it aloud so the other players can say it with them and match it on their boards. The project is designed to encourage cooperation, providing players the chance to assist one another through their own choices.
If a participant speaks a language not already represented, they are invited to write a word/phrase in their language. This new word/phrase becomes a “wild card” which can be matched in any other language.
More often than not, people approach when they recognize themselves in a language on the board. This is a surprising discovery, and they would share it with me as if to say “I am here – why am I here?” Curiosity, but also identity come into play: having the space to express themselves in their native language, and the time to share with others the distinct personal and cultural meaning the words hold for them. For example, my dialogue with several Mandarin speakers prior to the Flushing, Queens iteration revealed that the word UNITY was much more common than the word SOLIDARITY. In the fallout of anti-Asian right wing COVID propaganda, this single word was a catalyst for numerous exchanges during those events.
Invited to take home a word/phrase card that resonates with them, a tactile anchor for their memory, players often pick one they learned during their game: what was moments ago the language of the “other,” becomes the voice of their neighbor.
With the addition of Wolof in the Harlem iteration, I began to see how bridge languages like French and Arabic, while offering the promise to connect people across language barriers, simultaneously erase the underlying meaning of words in indigenous languages. This is occurring in both spoken and written forms, often as a formalization/simplification of language for the sake of business or official communication – ideas and concepts passed down for generations wiped away through standardization.
We see a similar process at work in right-wing recasting of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) initiatives as “racist.” In a brazen attempt to suppress a history rife with land, resource, and labor extraction, the robber barrons now claim that the very mention of this history is an act of prejudice against them (and all who aspire to be them), an attack on the American Dream itself…
Masquerading as anti-globalization champions, these self-serving con men pit the victims of neoliberal policies against one another, scripting scarcity narratives that demand the desperately poor defend the little they have from those that are coming to take it from them. Convincing generations of immigrants, who have quite literally given their lives for this country, that the only way to secure their personal story of the American Dream is to close the gate behind them.
Just prior to submitting the proposal for Lingo Bingo, I had the opportunity to collaborate with producer/director Bryan Gunnar Cole of Nia Tero and the Wayfinders Circle, on a pair of map animations for a film about the Blackfoot Confederacy – Niitsitapi. The design process required a deep dive into the colonial nature of map making, with its underlying dual purpose of possession and control of property. How does one depict an indigenous perspective of territory, concerned with looking after the land, rather than owning it? The experience helped me see more clearly how indigenous people, immigrants, forcibly relocated migrants and refugees, are directed, in many cases forced, to “speak English;” to accept the linguistic superiority of a language that is employed systematically to strip them of their land, their beliefs, and their freedom.
When a player asks “what is this word?” my fellow facilitators and I would attempt to say the word in the language it is written in, rather than default to an English translation. While I wanted the ideas to be recognizably related, I was conscious that certain ideas would not translate easily from one language to another. For example, when consulting with Priscilla Colon of Casa Areyto on the Taíno words, we discussed how the term AMERICAN DREAM was particularly complicated in relationship to Puerto Rico’s status as a unincorporated territory/commonwealth of the United States. In light of this, Priscilla suggested we substitute the term AXÍJIRA TAÍNO, which translates to Taíno awakening.
Researching a series of Brooklyn iterations for 2025, we continued our dialogue about the revitalization of the Taíno language. She explained that for the Taíno, there was no separation between the land and the people, they were one and the same. Through a video she produced I learned the word JÍBARO, the word JÍBA for tree or forest, combined with RO for love. Ironically, these “people of the forest” were likely forced off the land where they lived, into the forest. Still used to cite those of Taíno descent, the previously pejorative term is now being reclaimed as a term of empowerment.
From this seed I began to expand the project focus to include environmental awareness within the framework of interconnection. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I began to wonder: what would our world look like if we all related to the trees as our relatives, as our elders, rather than as a resource to be bought, sold, and consumed? Do words like SOLIDARITY and UNITY have any significance in a society that lives outside of the us vs. them conflict narrative? Is it possible for immigrants and refugees to reclaim their connection to the land after they have been forced off of it through war, violence, and climate change?
Our Tower of Babel has us chasing dualistic ghosts, defined and redefined by heads talking out both sides of their mouths. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. How do we move forward in the absence of objective truth? More pointedly: is our dependence on objective truth making us vulnerable to this kind of intentional duplicity?
Young English speakers learn nouns first – defining reality through the existence of individual objects. They learn to discriminate this from that, creating a hierarchy that defines what any given object is, and what it is not. A hierarchy that we use to make value judgments about relative worth. The hierarchy allows us, for example, to prioritize human lives over those of non-humans. We are then able to dehumanize other humans by referring to them as “animals.” How does this example change if we subvert the hierarchy by recognizing the animals, the trees, the water, the earth, the wind, the sun as our “relatives?” How does our relationship to our environment change when we realize that our individual sense of self is not threatened by a larger interconnected sense of self?
Inspired by my inclusion in the Bay Ridge Public Art & Ecology Biennial: Essential Shore / Permeable Future, I began exploring connections between the immigrant/refugee experience and environmental awareness, researching a series of “green cards” featuring words that speak to our interconnection and interdependence. The process revealed words with multiple meanings apparent only in context, embodying a kind of interconnectedness within the word itself. I stumbled on words that seemed to subvert ego in favor of indigenous identity. I asked for words that transcend categorization and objectification. I received words that break down duality to reveal the whole, or the one.
Added to game play by random selection each round, these words replace GREEN CARD or AMERICAN DREAM on the board in whichever language they correspond to. Once the cards are in play, they can all be matched to one another, regardless of language or origin. They compliment other green cards that allow the phrase IMMIGRANTS ARE WELCOME HERE to be replaced with REFUGEES ARE WELCOME HERE in each of nine languages in the Bay Ridge iteration. A compassionate reminder that migration is rarely a choice, and that climate refugees are still not recognized for asylum under international law despite their ever increasing numbers.
For more info on Lingo Bingo visit thomasdalegallagher.com
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