Aditu is research that combines dance and sound art in relation to deafhood and the use of sign language as an endless source of movements for choreography and also sounds through different technologies and gestures.
We auscultate the limits of hearing in order to enjoy sound and silence through the body.
We give voice to those who can hardly hear but who know how to listen better than anyone else to the body and its movements.
The Basque word “aditu” could be translated as hearing, listening, understanding, smelling, perceiving or / and agreeing. While in Latin the word "aditus" means to approach or address.
From this capacity of listening to perceive, get along and understand each other, as well as to agree, it gives us the opportunity to get closer to the others and address them.
The name of this project reflects the desire to meet the other through language, silence and body, adding the presence and absence of all language and speaking through the body and listening.
Within the field of dance, music is usually understood as a guide for the dancers' movements or as an accompanying background sound.
We investigate other possibilities of the use of music within the world of contemporary dance, delving into what we could call the auscultation of dance from the conditions of possibility inherent in listening.
We combine sound, body and technology in relation to deafhood and the use of sign language as an inexhaustible source of movements for choreography and for sound creation.
We strip the boundaries of hearing by giving us the opportunity to feel and enjoy sound through the body. For people who do not suffer from hearing problems, that is to say "normal hearing" people, it may be a game of the contours of their auditory perception.
While for people who have any of the different auditory pathologies, it will be a space to freely and directly feel the sound in their bodies.
We invite, include and join groups that are differentiated and discriminated by their hearing capacity to bring them together in their capacity for listening, attention and communication through the body.
“Is phonocentricity “deaf” to the voice which it cannot hear — or is it simply covering its ears?” – Jacques Derrida
We question audism as a form of power where the ear is privileged as a perceptual organ and which accounts for dominant listening policies that establish limits on what to hear, how far to hear and what to hear for.
We propose a listening that attends without the need for hearing and goes beyond the limits of audism and that recognizes other modes of hearing, listening, of attention to other bodies, other affections and sensitivities whose modes of sounding and attending destabilize the established orders.
A deconstruction of sign language and speech that become body language, silent and sound at the same time. A silent, oral and aural voice that exceeds the limits of hearing.
Where do we place the voice in human communication? In orality or in aurality? Who is he talking to or who is he listening to? Is the voice an external body and foreign to all communication?
Sign language demonstrates the ability to question the limits of the human voice and its identity beyond auditory perception.
Every translation aims to minimize the differences between two different signifiers in order to offer the same meaning, although its condition of possibility is the loss of it.
Translation reveals the role of the translator, who is simultaneously, on the one hand, the listener and, on the other hand, the voice of the other, who is speaking. The translator tends, in this sense, not to have a voice and, therefore, to become invisible behind the meaning of the words.
Translator's voice moves through the horizontality of possible and different meanings, making his presence invisible in favor of understanding. His job is to walk between different signifying worlds to offer the possibility of mutual understanding in the difference through the same meaning.
Using translation as a choreographic gesture offers the body the possibility of giving different meanings to its movements. The body of the performer, translator or dancer is a medium through which possible meanings move. We understand the translator and the dancer as an interpreter of meanings, a messenger who walks through words and languages.
The succession of translations simultaneously offers the possibility of visualizing different translations and their condition of possibility, which is the loss of meaning in itself. Sign language offers, in this sense, an inexhaustible source of movements and possibilities for choreography.
In sign language, movement becomes a word and in turn the word as a sign. Its way of pointing to and describing the world goes beyond the oral and aural word.
In fact, all spoken communication contains a precondition that belongs to the essence of sign language and is the gestural meaning of human communication, indicating the way to a silent, attentive and respectful communication with the other and with the environment.
We value the gestures of sign language and discover the contours of the oral word and of hearing, finding each other again in the signed movement.
We approach the D/deaf Culture to listen to its own voice and learn from its capacity for attention and listening to the body and empower the D/deaf Community.
We promote dialogue between "normal hearing" people and the D/deaf Community through a silent communication that stimulates mutual understanding.