In the Polish Pavilion, “Liquid Tongues” Rewrites Our Hierarchy of the Senses

The installation invites a sensorial immersion that unsettles the ordinary hierarchies of sense and language. At its core is Choir in Motion (Chór w Ruchu), a group of hearing and Deaf performers who interpret communication codes through International Sign (IS) and spoken English. Through images, sound composed by Aleksandra Gryka and physical experience, the work amplifies and interprets acoustic waves corresponding to the vocalizations and echolocation of right whales. The result is a plurisensorial collective choreography, directed by Alicja Czyczel and filmed by Magda Mosiewicz and Bogna Burska, in which the choir enacts fluid movements inspired by schools of fish, proposing a form of communication built on collective resonance rather than speech.

A significant portion of the work was filmed underwater—an environment where spoken language becomes distorted while sign language remains legible and powerful. Water makes visible that sound itself is a matter of waves and frequencies, transforming what is often perceived as a limitation into a primary site of communicative and sensory potential. In water, the hierarchy built on communication competencies flips upside down, Burska explains. “Phonic speech becomes incomprehensible and swiftly forces us to release all the air in our lungs. Signing, instead, remains effective underwater,” she says. Hearing scuba divers use simple signing codes; deaf divers, however, can communicate freely with one another.

“Human beings have created a picture of the world subject to the laws of air. That’s why we play according to that hierarchy,” Kotowski says. “Underwater, we sign more slowly than above, which gives the language a different quality and increases attentiveness to the motions of sign language. But there is no loss of content.”

“Water changes many things—the lack of oxygen, most importantly, which we all feel equally,” Burska adds. Water is more than 800 times denser than air, meaning sound travels almost 5 times faster yet dissipates quickly. At the same time, layers of varying density in the ocean function as nearly lossless channels for acoustic waves, allowing sound to travel thousands of kilometers. Light, by contrast, is rapidly absorbed underwater, yet when seen through an air-filled mask or goggles, objects appear closer than they are. “Water carries vibrations better than air—when a whale sings, we feel it with our bodies, much as we intensely feel the echolocations of many cetaceans if we’re within range. This world, and learning how it works, is extremely inspiring. It challenges our assumptions and forces us to ask: What if?”

The pavilion operates within a productive tension between communication and miscommunication, between human-coded systems and more intuitive natural ones. In doing so, it gestures toward themes of loss and reconstruction—how humans, as well as other species, have continually created new ways of transmitting knowledge when established codes become threatened or inaccessible.

The reflection feels particularly timely. In a moment of hyper-connectivity—when the technological possibilities for communication seem limitless yet experiences of alienation proliferate—the dynamics activated by “Deaf gain” foreground the possibility of alternative models of embodied connection and attentive reattunement, both among humans and between humans and other beings.

“The world often looks for simplifications, especially within capitalist systems, so that communication is streamlined and serves the interests of the many,” Kotowski argues. “Other forms of communication remain invisible, underappreciated or excluded.” Among those forms is sign language, which is often not recognized as an alternative system, though it offers another mode of interaction that carries distinct advantages. “Sign language fosters attentiveness and sensitivity in observing situations and people, fueling empathy and allowing for detailed narration.” In this sense, Deaf gain exemplifies the benefits that emerge from alternate ways of communicating and perceiving the world—forms that imply a more embodied, transpersonal awareness beyond the one-directional rational logics of language that have shaped an anthropocentric, exclusively human-defined sense of reality.

“I think our idea of communication is just one among many, just as there are multiple ways of rebuilding and restoring parts of reality that matter to us,” reflects Burska, describing this reconstruction as a “creative work inseparable from the present time. I don’t know how to solve the alienation crisis. But building diverse physical communities—of humans and non-humans—and constantly rethinking how we relate, to see whether some form of collaboration is possible, is worth the effort.” As the pavilion unfolds, it becomes clear how many of our assumptions stem from habit or needless simplification. “We should examine them carefully,” she concludes. “Perhaps many other alternatives are indeed possible.”

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