ORO:ORÐ: Icelandic Basque Pidgin

Authors: Erin Honeycutt & Alex Mendizabal

Publisher: Cutt Press (2023)

This began as a conversation with the Basque composer, Alex Mendizabal about the existence of an Icelandic-Basque Pidgin language formed when Basque sailors arrived in Iceland in the early 17th century.

We decided to update the pidgin in the form of a libretto in which 12 Acts each correspond to a painting from the year 1616. The Icelandic-Basque poems are ekphrastic, describing each painting, but the paintings are not shown in their original. Each painting has been transformed by AI into a line drawing.

Oro:orð is simplified communication forms within a libretto, music, water, bubbles and images in twelve acts. It may take different forms such as (but not only) installation, radio play, internet or operatic stream, underwater publications. Oro:orð is inspired by the Icelandic Basque Pidgin, a trading language used between Basque and Icelandic whalers in the late 16th and early 17th century. It was not spoken, but only written on ledgers. Like the internet itself, it is a communication device for economic purposes, which is, in fact, an artifact. The libretto is written in Icelandic, English, and Euskara (Basque language) and is composed of ‘acts’ based on paintings produced in the year 1616 from around the world, reflecting on the long arrival of the current state of globalization. Each Act of the libretto is based on a painting from the year 1616 and includes an AI drawing of the painting in lieu of the actual image.

ORO:ORÐ was screened at the Cybernetics of the Poor festival at Tabakalera in 2020 as a lyric video by Francois Pisapia