We’ve all raised our eyebrows at highly academic utterances from esteemed art world bigwigs, which leave us scratching our head. Or been left reeling by a perplexing press statement that resorts to highfalutin language. This art jargon fascinates New York-based artist Bill Claps who has made a 16-minute documentary on the subject called Artspeak. Claps says: “I’ve been collecting press releases for many years, particularly those with the most egregious forms of Artspeak, as I find them amusing examples of absurdist language. When I started using Morse code in my works and started thinking more about language and code it started to occur to me that the language that is used in the art world is really a form of code, a separate dialect, one that uses words and phrases that are only circulating within the clique of art world.” (Claps goes so far as to develop a series works based on the often incomprehensible lingo). The film even shows passers-by on the streets of New York and Europe reciting absurdist arty phrases such as “certain generative metaphors” and “enduring conundrum”. Artspeak was shown at the All lights India International Film Festival this week in Kochi, southern India.