language beyond speech: at the polish pavilion, sound and movement construct narrative

polish pavilion emphasises communication beyond speech

What if communication was not something we mastered, but something we learned to listen into – slowly, collectively, and across difference? Artists Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski represent Poland at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, with Liquid Tongues, an immersive audio-video installation that rethinks who language belongs to. In a moment shaped by fractured systems and dominant narratives, the project shifts attention toward the quieter, often overlooked forms of exchange that sustain connection.

Curated by Ewa Chomicka and Jolanta Woszczenko, and produced by Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, Liquid Tongues brings together Deaf and hearing performers, whale songs, and more-than-human modes of perception to explore how meaning is carried through bodies, gestures, and sound beyond speech. A significant part of the installation takes place underwater, where perception, hierarchy, and language begin to destabilize. Across choreographed movement and sound inspired by fish shoals, cetacean vocalizations, and the embodied language of sign, visitors experience communication as a shared, sensory process rather than a fixed system. The result is a space of attunement: one that foregrounds marginalised languages, embraces loss and renewal, and cultivates forms of attention grounded in listening, coexistence, and the ongoing work of making meaning together.

‘In this environment, Deaf people can communicate freely in sign language, while hearing people produce distorted sounds,’ the artists explain. The boundary between air and water becomes ‘a space for communication experiments – a mirror showing which forms of expression and understanding cross between these environments and how their meanings change.’ Below, designboom discusses with the artists how Liquid Tongues reframes voice, redistributes power, and imagines communication beyond the limits of sound.

Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, Liquid Tongues, 2026, video | all images courtesy of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, unless stated otherwise

liquid tongues at the venice art biennale 2026

Grounded in the concept of Deaf Gain, Liquid Tongues reframes deafness as cultural and perceptual expansion. ‘Instead of perceiving deafness as a thing to be fixed or treated, it is seen as a trait that can make a unique contribution and be to society’s advantage,’ the artists tell designboom. Within this framework, loudness detaches from the phonetic voice. ‘From the perspective of Deaf Gain, loudness does not need to be tied to the phonetic voice – it is a way of asserting presence,’ the duo proposes.

Positioned within the 2026 Biennale’s curatorial framework shaped by Koyo Kouoh, which invites attention to minor keys and overlooked registers, the project extends listening toward whales, marginalized languages, and more-than-human communication systems. ‘When we stop assuming that language must be spoken and/or human, entirely new post-anthropocentric futures open up,’ Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski reflect, proposing communication as multisensory, relational, and shared rather than singular, spoken, and human-bound. Read on for our full conversation with the artists behind the Polish Pavilion below.

Choir in Motion performs underwater in scenes inspired by whale communication and collective movement

discussion with artists Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski

designboom (DB): Liquid Tongues hinges on listening beyond the human. What was the first moment or research thread that made you realize whales and Deaf culture could intersect as a communication metaphor?

Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski (BB & DK): Bogna Burska has watched the documentary film Fathom about Ellen Garland and Michelle Fournett, in which the two researchers try to decode the complex communication of whales. Due to her previous collaboration on the project Rebellion of the Deaf. Renewal, which brought together hearing and Deaf people, she called curator Ewa Chomicka with a proposal for a choral project in both spoken and signed languages, referencing the ways whales communicate and sing.

Daniel Kotowski, the Deaf co-author of the project, found a strong connection between the history of whales and Deaf people – as experiences of marginalization, including taking away from marine mammals and Deaf people the fact that they speak and that their communication culture is complex and multi-layered.

the installation combines underwater cinematography, choreography, and International Sign

DB: You frame underwater communication as a space where Deaf people can communicate freely in sign, while hearing people become acoustically distorted. How did that inversion, that shift in ‘who the world fits best’, shape the tone of the installation?

BB & DK: This is one of the main elements of the installation. Following the concept of Deaf Gain, we understand deafness not as a disability but as an identity and culture, offering unique perspectives and potential. A significant part of the video and audio material will be created underwater – in this environment, Deaf people can communicate freely in sign language, while hearing people produce distorted sounds. The boundary between air and water becomes a space for communication experiments – a mirror showing which forms of expression and understanding cross between these environments and how their meanings change. Playing with shifts in language dominance and disrupting phonocentric perception is a recurring element of the work. Sometimes this idea is treated ironically, as in the scene spoken underwater by Deaf and hearing performers: ‘Deaf and hearing equally.’

red costumes drift underwater as the performers navigate altered perception and weightlessness

DB: Working underwater changes perception, proprioception, and even time. How did your bodies, and the bodies of the choir, adapt artistically to this circumstance?

BB & DK: Working underwater profoundly changed how our bodies and the choir’s bodies experienced movement, perception, and time. Breathing became a shared focus – we had to adapt to the underwater environment, learning to coordinate and think with the rhythm of our breath. In many ways, this mirrored the way whales surface for air, connecting us physically to other mammals and to the natural world.

Being in the water heightened our awareness of proximity, touch, and the physical presence of each other, creating a sense of closeness not only among humans but with the non-human world as well. The underwater environment allowed us to step outside the usual dynamics of language dominance, offering a kind of privilege in communication where sign language could flow freely without hierarchy.

Time itself felt different: more fluid and expansive. Movements felt weightless, which is why we sometimes used weights, and our proprioception – our sense of our own bodies – shifted, allowing new forms of artistic expression and exploration of space.

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Deaf and hearing performers communicate underwater

DB: The installation uses acoustic waves to mirror whale vocalizations and echolocation. How do you imagine these vibrations reaching the visitor?

BB & DK: We would like the sonic experience to be audible, visual (see: the choreography of sign language), and – at selected moments – physically felt in the body, much like whales experience sound in water. The desired effect is inspired by underwater acoustic phenomena that correspond to the sensations evoked by cetacean vocalizations and echolocation, and that are also close to the experiences of Deaf people, who perceive sound waves through vibration. We aim for the waves that appear at specific moments to be immersive, not aggressive. The solutions are currently in the design phase, with careful consideration given to the impact of sound waves on living organisms and the surrounding environment.

rehearsing submerged choreographies for Poland’s pavilion

DB: You’re combining cinematography, sign language, underwater recording, and choreography. Which medium proved the most resistant, and which one opened new conceptual doors?

BB & DK: We work through connections and interlockings. Above-water and underwater cinematography, choral singing and electronic music, choreography, sign and phonic languages – these media meet and enter into dialogue with one another. The project is multilayered: we combine the potentials and languages of different tools, while also exploring the possibilities and capacities of their transformation, distortion, and above all, amplification and empowerment. It is at the points where these qualities meet, and within their relationality, that the most compelling discoveries and conceptual doors emerge. This approach aligns with the overarching theme of flow, fluidity, and connectivity within difference, through mutual listening.

performers move collectively, inspired by schools of fish and shared bodily rhythms

DB: The theme of the 2026 Biennale centers on ‘minor keys,’ delicate registers that are often ignored. In what way do you see Liquid Tongues operating in a minor key, and in what way is it defiantly loud?

BB & DK: In her curatorial concept for Biennale 2026, based on the musical metaphor of ‘minor keys’, Koyo Kouoh invites us to a contemplative encounter with what is delicate and overlooked from day to day – quiet voices, neglected narratives, micro-memories. She encourages us to develop subtle forms of resistance, to create new relationships, sensitive experiments, to build polyphonic scores of communities listening to, sensing, and resonating with each other. Liquid Tongues develops this idea, attempting to break through what we imagine to be the limits of communication and to create subjective communities of hearing and Deaf people, taking various perspectives into account. This proposed version of the future considers an animal perspective as well.

Roger Payne’s now-legendary Songs of the Humpback Whale recordings of 1970 led to bans on whale-hunting and brought these animals back from the verge of extinction. The complexity of their sounds made us realise their intelligence and cultural sophistication. This story shows the power of salvaged voices transmitted through art.

The narrative of the installation will be based on tales of loss and forgetting, reconstructing and creating reality anew. This is the story of Payne’s work and the significance of his recordings. It is a new and unheard (or maybe old and reborn) collection of hundreds of solitary humpbacks off the west coast of Africa. It is the creation of works on the qilaat – a ritual drum of the native inhabitants of Greenland – even though no one knows its sound from before their brutal colonisation. It is work on restoring Hand Talk – Plains Indian Sign Language – the universal sign language of hearing and Deaf native inhabitants of the Great Plains of North America. These stories allow us, in spite of everything, to think about reconstructing the surrounding world.

Video sketches – Bogna Burska, video sketches for the ‘Liquid Tongues’ | image by Magda Mosiewicz, performers: Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, courtesy of the artists

Defiantly Loud is based on the concept of Deaf Gain, which sees deafness not as a disability, but as an identity and culture, offering unique perspectives and potential. Deaf Gain turns being Deaf from a loss into a gain, showing how Deaf people contribute to the world’s diversity. This approach also has its advantages for hearing people. Instead of perceiving deafness as a thing to be fixed or treated, it is seen as a trait that can make a unique contribution and be to society’s advantage. Deafness is often described as living in a ‘world of silence.’ Yet signing can be forceful, expansive, even aggressive; its intensity shifts from sound to vision. From the perspective of Deaf Gain, loudness does not need to be tied to the phonetic voice – it is a way of asserting presence. The project also includes phonetic screams and the voices of Deaf people, but these are presented on their own terms, outside phonocentric hierarchies.

Choir in Motion, the group performing on screen, is an experimental social choir with its own history, combining music, performance, visual art, and spatial practice. The group survived the loss of its home – the founding cultural institution where it had developed over several years – emerging as a grassroots initiative of shared creativity and action. Born in early 2024 from this social energy, Choir in Motion is a self-organising, open initiative that sustains its community – one that seeks to perform, act, and speak out together, while remaining receptive to new voices and perspectives. Revolt of the Deaf: Renewal directed by Bogna Burska and curated by Daniel Kotowski (Zachęta, 2025), is a play where Choir in Motion first appeared in a phonic/sign-language ensemble (hearing and Deaf people). The play spoke of communication problems, universal languages, and the revolt of Deaf students in 1988 at Gallaudet University. While working on this play, a remarkable community of Deaf and hearing people was created, beyond language barriers.

Liquid Tongues explores communication beyond phonetic language | image by Magda Mosiewicz, performers: Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, courtesy of the artists

DB: The project deals with marginalized languages and more-than-human communication. What kinds of futures feel possible when we stop assuming that language must be spoken and human?

BB & DK: When we stop assuming that language must be spoken and/or human, entirely new post-anthropocentric futures open up, in which humans no longer see themselves as an exceptional or dominant species. This perspective allows us to notice how non-human biological beings communicate and interact in rich and complex ways.

It also allows us to imagine that the norms we take for granted around language – especially those arising from phonocentric hierarchies, such as what counts as a ‘proper’ language, who speaks, who is allowed to speak, and who is heard – may, depending on the context, shift or break down. What is considered an inability or loss from a dominant perspective, can become a source of strength and gain – a shared gain.

By paying attention to non-verbal and more-than-human communication, we can explore the possibilities of multisensory, non-linear, and collective languages, creating futures in which communication is more inclusive and relational, while also being sensitive to diverse ecosystems.

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a submerged encounter with marine life | image by Magda Mosiewicz, performers: Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, courtesy of the artists

DB: If Liquid Tongues could leave Venice with one lingering question in people’s minds, what would that question be?

BB & DK: How does everything speak? Does everyone speak? And why does the hierarchy of voice and the privilege of speaking still persists, when language can be anti-systemic, need not be elitist, and communication does not have to rely solely on the phonetic voice?

communication as multisensory, relational, and shared across bodies and species | image by Magda Mosiewicz, performers: Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, courtesy of the artists

dissolving the boundary between spoken language, gesture, and movement | image by Magda Mosiewicz, performers: Bogna Burska, Daniel Kotowski, courtesy of the artists

authors of Liquid Tongues (from left to right: Ewa Chomicka, Bogna Burska, Jolanta Woszczenko, Daniel Kotowski) | image by Filip Preis / Zachęta Archive