In What Language?

Vijay Iyer & Mike Ladd

This project takes its title from a pre-9/11 experience of the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, in spring 2001 while traveling from a festival in Hong Kong to one in Buenos Aires. Transiting through JFK, he was detained by INS officials, shackled to a bench in a crowded cell for several hours, and ultimately sent back to Hong Kong in handcuffs. Panahi's description of this ordeal was widely circulated online. He wanted to explain his story to fellow passengers: "I'm not a thief! I’m not a murderer! ... I am just an Iranian, a filmmaker. But how could I tell this, in what language?"

As fellow brown-skinned travelers, we could not ignore this tale. It became a point of departure for what this project became: a song cycle about people in airports, narratives of lives in transit. Filtered through our hyphenated perspectives, these stories are airport myths, documenting the experiences of the new global worker.

The airport is not a neutral place. It serves as a contact zone for those empowered or subjugated by globalization. It is a center of commerce and a crossroads of cultures, as well as a place that enforces its own globo-consumer culture. It is a frontier, a place of conflict and quarantine, reception, departure, and detention.

This is our commentary on the non-neutrality of transit. It is not just a collection of travelers' tales, but also a series of views on history and human migration. It is our attempt to make sense of the tumultuous world around us. We hope that you will do the same.

-Mike Ladd & Vijay Iyer