Inner Child

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

Date: 2022
Medium: Multi-channel sound installation, video, mixed media on paper

Research has shown that newborns do not possess the ability to distinguish languages and
accents from one another. In other words, we come into this world with the capacity to speak
every language in the world, and it is only through our upbringing that we acquire the ability to
distinguish accents, languages, and cultures from one another. For an increasing amount of
people worldwide, the idea that a nurturing community will teach us a monolithic language and
set of customs is fading away. Many children now grow up in multicultural and multilingual
environments, and learn how to juggle between different languages, histories, and beliefs
systems, from their birth. The following work questions the very idea that culture, knowledge,
and observation can only be learned once.
Bady Dalloul’s Inner Child is a new site-specific installation he has developed during PROJECT
ATAMI’s artist residency. Born in Paris of Syrian parents, Dalloul has from an early age
navigated between the French and Arab cultures, and his work often deals with the complex
postcolonial history between France and the Middle-East. Dalloul’s connection to Japan, which
he has developed since 2016 through exhibitions and residencies, could thus be seen as an
outlier. Yet, it is the ability to be so far-removed from Japanese culture, both physically and
linguistically, that gives the artist to ability to reflect more profoundly on the notion of cultural
identity, belonging, and migration.
Migration, or the act of moving between countries, can be understood with the theory of tabula
rasa, from the Latin words “erased slate” or “blank slate”. Tabula rasa refers to the idea that
humans are born without any preconceived notions and that all knowledge comes from
experience and observation. In constant learning phase, migrating to a new foreign land can feel
like a becoming a child again. It is a difficult process to absorb observations, without
preconceived judgements, and unlearn the codes of adult life to return to a blank slate of
ignorance and curiosity.
Titled Inner Child, this installation is made of four soundtracks, two mirroring video projections,
and a mixed media drawing. Recorded in Japanese, French, English, and Arabic, the multi-
channel soundtrack aims to transport the audience into a meditative flow, where they are invited
to access their inner child and profound memories in the womb. Hypnotherapy plays a big role in
the soundtrack, as scripts are made in collaboration between Bady Dalloul and Mami Nakanishi
a trained hypnotherapist. In a transported state, the audience can then actively listen to Dalloul
and Nakanishi’s internal multilinguistic dialogue in their own learned melody of Japanese,
French, English, and Arabic, accompanied by footage shot in Atami, and sounds of nature
recorded in Dubai. An invitation to travel inwardly and outwardly, the sound installation
celebrates Atami’s seashores and mirrors the theme of this exhibition of the sea as a
meeting point between different cultures. Dalloul and Nakanishi’s work reveal that the

ocean, with its constant waves and motion, exists in pendulum between melody and
hypnosis, demonstrating the beautiful cohabitation between cultural learning and unlearning.