Principles

Antena Aire used writing and multilingual space-building as conduits for a collective creative activist practice that reimagines the power of language. Antena Aire worked at the intersection of multiple fields of artistic and political experimentation: writing, literary social practice, interpretation, translation, language justice, performance, installation, book-making, public interventions and radical pedagogy. Each provided us with a context, a vocabulary and a set of principles. We did not make much distinction between our artistic work and our organizing work; for us, art exists to perform a revisioning of the dominant monolingual U.S. way of doing literature, community-building and street-level performance. Some of our core working principles were:

Language justice is social justice.

Everyone has the basic human right to speak in the language(s) in which we feel most comfortable at a given time. The purpose of creating a dynamic and functional multilingual space is to make it possible for people to express themselves in whichever language they wish, and to be heard and understood by others in the room, regardless of whether they speak the same language.

Language is a critical element of the process of struggle toward a more just society. Too often in social justice movements, despite our best intentions, we recreate the same language dominance at play in the mainstream culture; in the United States and in much of the world, English plays this dominant role.  Antena Aire is committed to creating spaces in which all languages are valued and accepted. Our work intends to encourage listening beyond the boundaries of what we already know, and to foster honest conversation that celebrates a vast multiplicity of languages and modes of expression.

As residents of the U.S. Southwest and West—territories that were once part of Mexico—we are also conscious of the two conflicting and competing historical, colonial languages of the region: Spanish and English. Further, we recognize the fact that the cities where we live and work are indigenous lands. In the past, hundreds, if not thousands of languages once existed here, and many indigenous languages still thrive more than 500 years after conquest. At the heart of language justice is the belief that all languages deserve to be valued, heard, appreciated and honored.

Language is a tool for transforming thinking and empowering action. 

Language is a powerful and intimate tool we can use to imagine and enact new ways of being in the world and relating to other people. For some monolingual speakers of English (or other dominant languages), a multilingual space might be the first time they have had the opportunity to listen live and in real time to a person who is expressing themselves in another language. For some speakers of non-dominant languages, a multilingual space might be the first time they have the opportunity to speak openly and publicly in their own language to people who do not share that language. Listening can lead to transformation: a multilingual space provides a setting for this transformation to take place.

Multilingual spaces are open to everyone: no language is defined as dominant. 

In a multilingual space organized through language justice principles, interpretation is provided to anyone who is not proficient or comfortable in all the languages spoken in that space. We do not make interpreters available for those who don’t speak English; rather, we are there to facilitate cross-language conversation among any participants who do not share a language. When we say we are available to anyone who is not proficient in all the languages spoken in a room—rather than there to “help those who do not speak English”—we unsettle the systems that would privilege one language as dominant and marginalize others, and rather prioritize communication among all participants across a range of languages.