Catalogue > At random

At the core of the film Message from Mukalap lies a unique sound recording that captures a spoken message from a man named Mukalap, recorded around 1936 in South Africa. Mukalap speaks in the now-extinct Khoe language !ora. He calls on a European audience to listen to his beautiful language just for once, and to him. ?His message is not only an urgent appeal for recognition, he also asks the audience to respond and send a message in return. The film is a response to his request.

Judith Westerveld (1985) grew up in South Africa and the Netherlands. She studied Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, followed by the Master Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam. In her films, audio-visual installations, photo-collages and performance based work, Judith Westerveld researches the relation between the archive, the voice and the narrative, probing who is heard and seen, remembered and historicized in a postcolonial world. Language in spoken, written and embodied form, as well as memory, oral history and archival material are recurring elements that shape her work. Gathering a multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations that are historical and contemporary, public and private, her works intertwine the worlds of facts and stories. With her work she aims to address and reflect upon the multiple ways the colonial past continues to impact the present. Her films and videos are distributed by, and part of the collections of LIMA (Amsterdam) and ARGOS (Brussels). From 2019 until 2023 her practice is supported by the Artist Basic grant, Mondriaan Fund. In 2017-2018 she received the Artist Start grant from the Mondriaan Fund.