Draft:Universal Tongue

Universal Tongue is a multifaceted art project by Dutch artist Anouk Kruithof based on found footage of diverse dance styles from across the globe, collected from the Internet.

The project encompasses an 8-channel video installation, a book publication, a website with an online database, and a single-channel video edition. Universal Tongue was presented at over 30 international exhibitions, including solo shows of the artist and belongs to several museum collections.

About the Project
Universal Tongue was created through an extensive research of dance found footage conducted by Anouk Kruithof along with an international team of 52 researchers. For the project’s purposes 8 800 videos were collected from YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, summing up to 250 hours of video material presenting a variety of dance videos from different social and cultural contexts of the globe, showcasing viral phenomena and social media trends. The collected footage has been described by each researcher, who categorised in total over 1000 dance styles from all 196 countries of the world.

Universal Tongue was set as an art project, which highlights fluidity, hybridity and interconnectedness of the modern digital era while honouring and celebrating the diverse historical and cultural backgrounds of the researched dances. In 2018, Kruithof created the centerpiece of Universal Tongue - an 8-channel video installation, presented at Medialab during the Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam commissioned by the curator Ward Janssen. The installation is rhythmically arranged using a unified soundtrack remixed with music samples from the found footage, creating an immersive audiovisual environment for the audience of four hours duration. The videos create an ongoing dance flow of looped moving images, where dance is presented as a form of an embodied knowledge of cultural identity, self-expression, fun and empowerment. Art work's immersive character is said to invoke a blur between categories of the world order, such as country, continent or culture of dance contexts - highlighting global interconnectedness of human expression and digital culture. The installation displays over 1,000 dance styles, comprising 32 hours of footage in total. In addition to the 8-channel installation, Universal Tongue also exists as a single-channel video edition created in 2022.

In 2021, Anouk Kruithof published the book UNIVERSAL TONGUE, with a second edition following in 2022. The book documents and describes all the dance styles categorised during the project’s research, accompanied by screenshot images from the found footage videos. The book is playfully described by the author as a “DANCYCLOPEDIA through the Jungle of Internet”, which pays tribute to the diversity and complexity of dance as global cultural phenomenon.

The project's findings are also presented in an online database, accessible at https://www.universaltongue.com/dance-styles-az. This database categorises and provides detailed information on the various dance styles identified, making the research publicly available.

Disclaimer
Universal Tongue was created with footage that is published online under the Creative Common License.

Exhibitions and Collections
Universal Tongue been exhibited at over 30 international venues and it is part of the permanent collection of, among others:


 * Museum Folkwang Essen, Germany,
 * Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands
 * Collection Josselin Souris in Tunis, Tunisia and Paris, France.
 * Collection Museum Het Nieuwe Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands (single-channel video)
 * Collection Frac Alsace, Alsace, France (single-channel video)
 * Collection De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), Amsterdam, The Netherlands (single-channel video)
 * Collection BERG contemporary / Ingibjôrg Jonsdottir, Reykjavík, Island (single-channel video)

Solo exhibitions

 * 2024: Universal Tongue, Kunsthal, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2024. (8-channels installation)
 * 2024: solo Universal Tongue, Mercerie, Brussels, Belgium, 2024. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Universal Tongue, Nocturnes with Anouk Kruithof, Cloud Seven, Bruxelles, Belgium, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Anouk Kruithof, Tentacle Togetherness, Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France Ile-de-France 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Universal Tongue, Confort Moderne, Poitiers, France, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Universal Tongue, Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris, France, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022/2023: Universal Tongue, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Universal Tongue, Cite des Arts, Paris, France, 2022. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Universal Tongue, Melkweg Expo, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Universal Tongue Kunstmin, Energiehuis, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Universal Tongue, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2021: Universal Tongue, Viernulvier (formerly called Vooruit), Ghent, Belgium, 2021.(8-channels installation)

As part of group exhibitions and festivals

 * 2024/ 2025: Part of group exhibition Tanzwelten, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, Germany, 2024/2025. (8-channels installation)
 * 2024: Part of Art & Sport, curated by Fabien Danesi, GrandPalais RMN, Grenoble, France, 2024. (single-channel installation)
 * 2024: Part of a group exhibition Can’t we all just get along?, Stevenson, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2024. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of group exhibition Uit het donker V, Warande Winter Warm: De Hoge Rielen,
 * Kasterlee, Belgium, 2023. (8-channels installation)
 * 2023: Part of festival ASVOFF, Paris, France, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of Robot Festival, Bologna, Italy, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of group exhibition De-mold, Contemporaryistanbul, Istanbul, Turkey, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of festival schrit_tmacher Just Dance, Schunck Glass Palace, Heerlen, The Netherlands, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of group exhibition A field guide to getting lost, Het Nieuwe Domein, Sittard, The Netherlands, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of the festival Un Été Au Havre, Le Havre, France, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2023: Part of festival Phest, Monopoli, Italy, 2023. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Part of festival Chroniques, Biennale of Digital Imagination, Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, France, 2022. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Part of KIKK festival Tales of Togetherness, Namur, Belgium, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Part of Tulca Festival of Visual Arts, Columban Hall, Galway, Ireland, 2022. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Part of group exhibition Big DaDa, Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2022. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Part of group exhibition I can live forever, Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp, Belgium, 2022. (single-channel installation)
 * 2022: Part of WHOLE United Queer festival, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Orangerie, Ferropolis, Germany, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Part of group exhibition From where I stand, Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Port 25, Mannheim, Germany, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2022: Part of group exhibition Folkwang and the City, Club Naked, Essen, Germany, 2022. (8-channels installation)
 * 2021: Part of festival Noorderzon, Vera, Groningen, The Netherlands, 2021.(8-channels installation)
 * 2021: Part of fotofestival, Stadhuiszolder, Naarden, The Netherlands, 2021. (8-channels installation)
 * 2021: Part of group exhibition Global Groove, 2021, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, 2021. (8-channels installation)
 * 2020: Part of Manifesta 13, Parallel Du Sud Program (#coronacancelled), Le Ballet National, Marseille, France, 2020. (8-channels installation)
 * 2018: Part of Cinekid Medialab, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2018. (8-channels installation)

Awards
Universal Tongue was shortlisted for Lumen Prize Moving Image Category, 2018, Golden Lion, Cinekid Festival, 2018, and long-listed for the The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, 2021.

External links & Press
Official website

Official artist's website