Singing Scores for Words Trump Purged

This programme features a live mix of the performances of Score for Words Trump Purged, performed across different European cities in front of US institutions.

As is well documented, for example in the New York Times (07.03.2025), US President Trump’s government is actively controlling and purging words. His administration has ordered the outright removal of hundreds of words from governmental websites, policy making, school curricula, etc. as well as red flagging documents that might include these words, such as grant applications, contracts, etc.

The New York times calls this a significant shift in the “corpus of language” to be used in government activities and thinking. This erasure of vocabulary enacts the rejection of DEI (Diversity Equality and Inclusion) principles, which it sees as promoting undeserving and unqualified people. This purging and demonising of words inevitably changes what the administration can say and think and therefore do in regards to important issues and the often underrepresented groups that these words describe and give presence to.

While in Europe/UK we are not yet directly affected by this purge of words and the consequent erasure of thoughts and actions, indirectly many European/UK businesses, particularly those with US ties, have been forced to adopt similar censorship and the dismantling of their DEI initiatives.

Furthermore, this cull of words which are vital to enable a nuanced thinking and acting on things such as precarity, climate change, social inclusion, … entrain us, by absence of any other description, in the norm of a white wealthy heteronormative male society based on a complete denial of difference and inequality, or the adverse consequences of neo-liberalism such as climate change, poverty, vulnerability.

It reduces us to a vocabulary that deliberately excludes and disenfranchises anything and anybody not counted within a very narrow bracket, and thus robs us of agency in relation to all the important issues we need to deal with so very urgently at this present moment.
This broadcast streams a live performance of these words, to practice their space and significance.

By anonymous sound artists