Broken and Reduced Languages

Institute of Broken and Reduced Languages

The Institute of Broken and Reduced Languages was founded by Márton Koppány in 1997. The work it has produced so far has appeared in print, but now, July 2000, it has moved part of its efforts onto the world wide web. With no predetermined formal, political, or clique agenda, the main interest of the Institute is to(meta)communicate across borders - whatever borders mean. Some border crossings lend themselves to easier descriptions than others: Fluxus, visual poetry, found poetry, and minimalism, for instance, have crossed artistic borders in unique ways. These directions in the arts play a major role in the basic work presented here -- but we're not setting up borders with this emphasis and will present other tendencies as well. National, linguistic, and cultural borders need not separate people at this point in history, and we are pleased to set up this multilingual site as a means of bringing people together, using a medium that should foster exchange and create new opportunities for communication. We are pleased that these border crossings at times allow us to present works that can be understood with a limited knowledge of a given language, but which require serious engagement from readers and their sensibility in respect to the nature of language -- or, more exactly, of the nature of the process of understanding.

- Márton Koppány and Karl Young