Turtles Are Voiceless
Hand-drawn animation (1,302 ink drawings) projected on a paper scroll
SD Video, B&W, Silent
02:27
2010

It took me a while to learn to pronounce the word "turtle." Now I am no longer misunderstood when I talk about turtles. I found the phrases "turtles are voiceless" as an exmplary phrase for the word "turtle" in the English dictionary I had. The title is a play on different meanings of the word "voiceless,":
(1) having no voice; mute
(2) uttering no words; silent
(3) unspoken; unuttered
(4) having no right of choice
(5) without voice; unvoiced.

The piece shows a two-headed turtle struggling to say the word "turtle" in silence, and the two heads eventually go separate from each other, leaving the shell behind.

© Sujin Lee