Caroline Bergvall is a French-Norwegian poet and artist based in London for the past 25 years.
Her practice deals with question of dominance and silencing notably in relation to language politics, bilingualism and prejudice, having an accent,
and also with notions of identity and belonging as other violent forms of speech and social border control, as she has frequently expressed it as part of her queer sexuality and poetics.
She has become increasingly known for her singular and multi-faceted use of multilingualism as a way of addressing deep seated and often elusive linguistic prejudices. As well as addressing these in relation to the question of migration.
She creates unique poetic works in a range of settings from books to installations and performances that address poetics and imagination of silencing, and the speech that emerges from socially imposed silences.
For Zoom2 she will be showing two works. She will read from one of her now classic early multilingual pieces. One she also often recreates in her installations: CROP.
And a short clip from her much noted and remarkable public collaborative writing event with bilingual and bicultural British poets online at the start of the pandemic: Night & Refuge.