Exhibition // Tiina Palmu: Dramatis Personæ – Gallery Hippolyte

Gallery Hippolyte // Dramatis Personæ equals all the characters of a play, short story, or other narrative. In the sound piece created in Tiina Palmu’s exhibition, the ‘play’ or ‘story’ is considered more broadly as different forms—such as a life, gallery space, street, or thought. Its characters, Dramatis Personæ, are words, users of a language, and the countless roles held in the human psyche.

In the gallery, 29 audio speakers repeat all the Finnish words listed in the Finnish Language Board’s Internet dictionary as read by the artist. Each of the speakers represents one letter of the alphabet. As they play simultaneously, the space is flooded with concepts and meanings arising from the crisscrossing of random word sequences, memories, and things learned. The audience can move around, listening to the deluge of words as a whole or attempt to focus more closely on a particular sound source.