In the short film, Message from Mukalap, a unique sound recording from 1936 South Africa captures Mukalap speaking the now extinct Khoe language, !ora. In his message, Mukalap calls on the European audience to listen – just for once – to his beautiful language. His message, which was played at the 1938 Third International Congress of Phonetic Sciences in Ghent, Belgium, urgently appeals for recognition and response. Westerveld uses this film to respond to Mukalap’s request, using Dutch, English, Afrikaans, and fragments of !ora – languages and translations creating a dialogue that resound the legacies of colonialism.

In collaboration with composer, phonographer and researcher Aleks Kolkowski, Westerveld recorded her reply to Mukalap using the same technology – His Masters Voice disc recorder and blank lacquer discs – that captured the original recording. Playing back Mukalap’s message on a grand E.M.G. Gramophone makes him simultaneously present and absent, while committing his message to the people and the soil of his homeland.

Judith Westerveld, born in The Hague, grew up between South Africa and the Netherlands. She studied Fine Art at Gerrit Rietveld Academie and completed a Master's in Artistic Research at the University of Amsterdam.

Her films, audiovisual installations, photo collages, and performance-based work research relationships among the archive, voice, and narrative, probing who is heard, seen, remembered, and historicised in a postcolonial world.

Language in spoken, written and embodied forms, along with memory, oral history, and archival materials shape her work, addressing the continuing impact of the colonial past. Based in Amsterdam and represented by Lumen Travo Gallery, her works are distributed by LIMA and ARGOS.