Alda Mohr Eyðunardóttir’s piece “An attempt not to write in brackets” is generated partially by a speech-to-text program to which Eyðunardóttir has dictated her own thoughts. The piece is a reflection on how Faroese language does not accommodate conversations on abortion; how it carries too much shame, too much resistance to acknowledging that abortion exists in the Faroe Islands and in Faroese. Can AI get the conversation going? Hey Google, how do we disentangle the societal problem which abortion represents in the Faroe Islands?

In addition to the words, Eyðunardóttir uses granny knots (kellingaknútar in Faroese) as representations of the bracketed tangles in Faroese society. Vacuum-packed textile, threads, which cover words, obscuring what can be read and said: “)However, if you know it’s a “kellingaknútur”, you can pull one of the ropes against yourself and the force of physics will loosen up the knot and dissolve it, the bracketing.(“The granny knots tie the piece together as a critique of a deadlocked situation which ought to be solved, and together with the text “An attempt not to write in brackets” emphasizes the limits of developing artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence rarely benefits minority languages (we just do not generate enough value for the companies who own the programs), so we must create the platform which generates Faroese conversations about abortion ourselves. But does a conversation have to be in Faroese to qualify as Faroese? Or are translation and migration between languages and countries part of what is most essentially Faroese?