ABOUT:

My mother tongue is swiss german. I grew up twenty minutes from Zurich and have been working and living within the city borders for more than ten years. Though close, my dialect hasn't fully become the one of Zurich native. I try, and I get close, but also, I fail. When I speak to my baby daughter, I speak in the tongue of my mother who is from Lucerne. I keep switching between dialects like a schizophrenic, depending on who I'm talking to. For a while now, I am writing songtexts and prose in my dialect. Zurich natives correct my writing all the time. I never said I'm writing in züritütsch. I feel, I'm very much in between languages. To note an only spoken language — can it be seen as a translation? Translating sounds into written words. The person noting is confronted with the letters and sounds of another language. The notation of the spoken language never seems to achieve the state of settlement of an actual spoken and written language.

BIO:

Dominic Oppliger, 1983, is currently doing his master studies in transdisciplinary studies at zhdk, and has been a musician with doomenfels, yakari, the legendary lightness, etc. He's gardening for a half-living and for some years now, has been writing and performing in his swiss german mother tongue.