Incubator is a sound installation exploring language, cultural identity, and the idea of integration. Inspired by the question of how we recognize and define belonging, the work takes its starting point in Nørrebrogade, one of Copenhagen’s most multicultural areas.
During walks through the neighbourhood, I recorded people answering a simple question: “How does a bird sound?” Their answers produced different imitations of bird sounds in different languages and cultural contexts.
The recordings are presented through a large wooden incubator containing cables and small speakers. Designed as a structure for artificially nurturing birds, the incubator becomes a metaphor for systems of integration and the attempt to shape individuals into a particular cultural community.
The work questions whether a person can be reduced to a culture, and whether integration is about becoming part of an existing system or about creating space for different ways of belonging.
Incubator
Installation
Copenhagen 2015
Wood, heating lamp, cables, loud speaker.