A SILENT SCHOOL

In August 2024, I joined about 30 members of the Experimental Sound Art Workshop (TEAS in Spanish) of the University of Uruguay for a soundwalk through Ciudad Vieja, a neighborhood located next to Montevideo’s Port. Following the directions of Lukas Kühne, teacher in charge of TEAS, we moved silently through the narrow streets of the old port city. The silence was palpable, each step amplifying the sounds of the city —30 people moving as one, without words or gestures.

That shared silence led me to a thought experiment and hypothetical exercise:

If Lukas had not been there to mark a direction, where would we have arrived? What path would we have taken? How can a group coordinate silently, without words or gesturing?

A silent massive group soundwalk without direction, just the knowledge that somehow we must get to a consensus.

The uncertainty of silence could cultivate a mutual sense of caring and preservation, an ephemeral community born out of shared attention. It could be a vacuum in which new languages may form even if they are temporary. In this way, we may think of silence not as an absence but as a medium.

What type of language must emerge in order for this to be possible? Maybe before thinking about the kinds of languages silence might foster, we could think about what kind of listening must that language require. What is the point of language if nobody knows how to listen?

Tojolab´al ¹ is a language spoken by Mayan communities in Chiapas, southern Mexico who call themselves Tojolwinik´otik. They have a particular worldview embedded in their language that can help us in this scenario. The Tojolwinik´otik describe two kinds of universes within language: the universe of the word that is spoken, referred to as k’umal; and the one of the word that is listened to, referred to as ab’al .

According to linguist Carlos Lenkersdorf, “ab’i”, the verb that is associated with the ab’al has a much wider implication than just “to listen”. Quoting from his book Aprender a Escuchar: enseñanzas maya-tojolabales ² :

“ …(ab’i) not only means to listen, but “ab’i yaj” means to feel pain, “ab’i jun may” means to smoke a cigarette, “ab’i ja smsamalil ja k’ini” means to feel the joy/beauty of a party (…) Therefore, ab’i could be translated to “to feel”, but we think that “to receive” clarifies it better (…)”

This entails a cultural understanding of listening that goes further than just sound, to listen could also be understood as accepting and recognizing an external entity into your body. It is an act carried out with the whole body that attends awareness to all the information of our surroundings ³ .

To create a silent coordinated movement, we need a different education for listening, to listen even to what is not sounded:

A Silent School.

To teach another kind of silence.

A non authoritarian form of silence.

A fearless form of silence.

A silence that has the purpose of fostering the intricacies of non-verbal communication. A school for listening.

A silent school is one in which the children are not taught to produce and execute aimlessly but to contemplate and understand their surroundings.

A silent school may form anywhere at any time.

A silent school is taught by students-teachers and teachers-students.

A silent school is a free flowing pool of information.

For a communal organization there’s a responsibility in creating silence and committing to listening.

– Some things are lost in translation, some others are gained–

This text was originally an entry in my composition journal (written in Spanish), its original title was “Cardumen Silente”, referring to a group of fish swimming in a coordinated manner. Isn’t it lovely that the translation is “Silent School”?

A SILENT SCHOOL

Performance for a hundred (or more) people.

Instructions:

1. Gather a hundred (or more) people in an open space
2. Ask them to coordinate movements across the space without talking or gesturing.
3. See what happens.

Footnotes

1. “Tojolab’al” derives from tojol, meaning “true,” and ab’al, meaning “word (that is listened).” ↩
2. Lenkersdorf, Carlos. Aprender a escuchar: enseñanzas maya-tojolabales [Learning to Listen: Maya-Tojolabal Teachings]. Mexico City: Plaza y Valdez Editores, 2008, 59. ↩
3. To explore the complexities of the Tojolwinik´otik wordview goes way beyond the scope of this text, that really only has the purpose of sharing some ideas on the practice of soundwalking, however I would encourage any curious one to read further into Lenkersdorf’s work whose writing I can recommend as an starting point for any outsider to understand Tojolwinik´otik culture. ↩