Meghan:
Does your relationship to language live differently in your roles as a Senior Policy Analyst and as an artist?
Does your relationship to language live differently in your roles as a Senior Policy Analyst and as an artist?
Kosisochukwu:
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this question initially—not because it’s a bad one, but rather because it’s one I’ve struggled to answer for a while now. What is interesting, is that I only recently remembered a statement I gave as a witness to a conference on social innovation and social finance I attended in London, Ontario in fall 2019 that speaks to so many of the themes I am now exploring but from a slightly different perspective. More specifically, in that statement, I make allusion to the Tower of Babel and the importance of finding common language as a way of creating a more inclusive social innovation and social finance sector. Here’s a quote so you can get a sense of how close yet different my ideas then were to what I am currently exploring:
‘How many of you are familiar with the legend of the Tower of Babel? In it, humankind attempts to come together to build a tower to reach the heavens, but is unable to do so because what used to be one universal language becomes mutually incomprehensible dialects. In our context, it is not only language that has the potential to divide us, but also these silos that represent different sectors, different organisational types, and different forms of knowledge production—be it institutional knowledge production within universities or knowledge that is derived from being in community or on the land.’
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this question initially—not because it’s a bad one, but rather because it’s one I’ve struggled to answer for a while now. What is interesting, is that I only recently remembered a statement I gave as a witness to a conference on social innovation and social finance I attended in London, Ontario in fall 2019 that speaks to so many of the themes I am now exploring but from a slightly different perspective. More specifically, in that statement, I make allusion to the Tower of Babel and the importance of finding common language as a way of creating a more inclusive social innovation and social finance sector. Here’s a quote so you can get a sense of how close yet different my ideas then were to what I am currently exploring:
‘How many of you are familiar with the legend of the Tower of Babel? In it, humankind attempts to come together to build a tower to reach the heavens, but is unable to do so because what used to be one universal language becomes mutually incomprehensible dialects. In our context, it is not only language that has the potential to divide us, but also these silos that represent different sectors, different organisational types, and different forms of knowledge production—be it institutional knowledge production within universities or knowledge that is derived from being in community or on the land.’