Translation is the title of a research project I have been working on for the last two years, which stands at a crossroads of intentions within a framework formed by three performance pieces by three artists. My purpose in limiting the frame to these three pieces and re-visiting them is to free up new working spaces.
The pieces in question are: Water Walk (1960) by John Cage, Locus (1975) by Trisha Brown and Organic Honey’s Visual Telepathy (1972) by Joan Jonas. I have worked on an approach to the three performance pieces and on notions of annotation towards the development of a score. The purpose of this annotation is not to capture the meaning or execution of the original performance, but rather the singularity of suggesting the birth of something.
In general terms, in Translation, I try to transfer the material of each of the three performances I investigate, or more specifically, the material of the original process of each performance. This is why I have chosen the English title "translate", for its dual sense of interpretation and transferral. Translating the material to other formats and situations, thus to exhaust and re-signify the process of translation. Here I view the translation process in the same way as writer and translator Ashkan Sepahvand does in the book Seeing Studies he wrote with artist Natascha Sadr Haghighian in which the notion of interval that occurs in the translation process is more a process of hybridization and mutation than of separation, an act of renovation rather than transferral. It is in this interval of movement and displacement that I want to articulate this project.
As a result of this research, I currently have material in video, drawings, musical scores and exercises which by their nature I do not wish to share in the form of a performance, so I am currently going to deposit the development of this research project in the creation of a publication and various videos.
The residency will take place in two separate periods, from May 9 to July 9, 2016, and from September 19 to October 30, 2016.
Project supported by EREMUAK.
Documentation