Meanings of translations.

FOUND IN TRANSLATION:

ART AND LANGUAGE IN GLOBAL CULTURE

SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR THE BOOK

SAN FRANCISCO

MAY 12-JULY 21, 2006

FOUND IN TRANSLATION:

ART AND LANGUAGE IN GLOBAL CULTURE (EXHIBITION CATALOG)

NEW YORK: BOOKLYN, 2006

40 PP./$20.00 (SB)

Book artists are in such a state of constant translation that they should take day jobs as foreign correspondents. With issues such as text, design, concept, images, sound, and general movement bound within the confines of the page, authors dance within a meticulously crafted score. In some ways, book artists are the ultimate control enthusiasts. The artists present exactly what they want you to read, see, feel, and hear. In most publishing houses, these myriad tasks exist in four different departments--but in book arts they are combined in an exciting challenge to attain visual literacy.

The recent book arts exhibition "Found in Translation: Art and Language in Global Culture" was curated by Marshall Weber and produced by the Booklyn Artists Alliance. But what does, and what can, translation mean? It can be a transition, an in-between space where words and ideas float around in space. It can be letters dancing in front of your eyes, creating anagrams out of all possible meanings. Weber's curatorial statement proposes that, "In our bodies we find the forms of our alphabets, and vice versa." This waltz of discovery, and potential pile of secrets, is one of the exciting aspects that artists' books and "Found in Translation" have in common.

Moving past the notion of presenting the artists' book in an enclosed glass case on a glowing white pedestal, the books in this exhibition are allowed to be books. Accordion pages line the walls at eye level, allowing viewers to move in space and time with the pages, their bodies bumping and stepping over other texts displayed below. The works overlap and, in constant exchange, walk the line between needing more breathing space and being comfortably in sync with one another. It is as if the books in this exhibition are one piece, their singularity emerging only when the viewer physically touches the pages of an individual book.

"Found in Translation" is successful as a multi-media exhibition, representing the wave of interdisciplinary work that has appeared in the arts of late: whether in studio practice, research, or exhibitions. The exhibit includes framed photographs, traditionally bound books (including historic texts with frayed and yellowed pages encased in fine, red cloth), and less traditional books with audio and computer-based accompaniment. One piece even offers a zip-locked plastic bag full of salt-and-pepper hair from a beard. This exhibit encapsulates the constant multitasking that is now embedded in our daily routines. Visitors' eyes are drawn to a photograph, while their fingers are attracted to letterpress pages and compelled to sift through the notebooks of M.T. Karthik and A.P. Ferrara's Discourse on the Polarizing Events of 2001 (2006). The room is an interactive game of the senses.

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Coupled with headphones, Jack and Betty Forever (2005) by Veronika Schapers and Yoshinori Shimizu presents itself as a fitting example of the exploratory scope of this exhibition. A stellar and simplistic design consisting of letterpress print and linocuts on graphed, store-bought, Japanese notebooks, this piece offers an English and a Japanese version, the overlapping languages meeting in the gutter. Printed in an edition of thirty-five, Jack and Betty Forever comes with a compact disc of old recordings of the rigid dialogue from the original Revised Jack and Betty, a textbook used in the 1950s and 1960s by Japanese students learning English. The short story weaves through a dialogue and budding relationship between Jack and Betty, thirty years after their days as young students. As the reader follows the language of these two characters, it is clear that the words they choose are still firmly rooted in the way in which they initially learned English. With conversations such as "Is that a sofa?" "No, that is not a sofa. That is a chair," they get caught in the elementary small talk within their knowledge of the language. Translation of their thoughts is hinted at but cannot be fully resolved, and the dialogue bounces back and forth on the page like a ball that is never caught.

Another book of interest is Talking Books (2006) by Nathaniel Bletter. As an ethnobiologist, Bletter uses the digital voice recorder chips of the commercialized talking photo albums of the West to translate the importance and fluency of medicinal plants in eastern Peru. Photographs of indigenous plants are presented with sound bites in local dialects, translating visual and medicinal information. Talking Books proves that artists' books can be a delivery device of social and educational progress. By taking the book outside its normal realm, Bletter uses his books as a tool for the mass transit of information.

Across the room, Clarissa Sligh presents her evocative work, Wrongly Bodied Two (2004), a book showing the transformation of "Jake" from female to male. While documenting Jake's experience, Sligh is faced with her own questions of identity and the challenges of societal acceptance regarding gender, race, class, and identity. Wrongly Bodied Two is presented with a binder of photocopies documenting her correspondence with Jake and his doctors and her own personal antidotes regarding this exploration of identity. Sligh pushes the boundaries in this exhibit, providing an inquisitive and delicate exploration into a quiet topic in society.

An Introduction to Square Word (New English Calligraphy) (1994-96) by Xu Bing is another playful yet profound piece. Given the integration of English language concepts into traditional Chinese language, the meta-language, Square Word is designed as an invented writing. The letters of an English word are physically arranged into a square--the visual shape of a Chinese character. The translation plays visual games and produces hieroglyphics as Bing deconstructs language barriers and contextual connotations. Part of the piece, an interactive computer program, allows visitors to type in their names; the program then applies Bing's linguistic system to transform the visitor's English name into a shape of global interest.

As noted in the exhibition catalog, one of the goals of the exhibition "is to start an interdisciplinary dialog that is evident and accessible to the viewer"--allowing viewers to experience a variety of approaches to artists' books and experience the power of visual literacy. Weber and Booklyn should consider their efforts worthwhile, as the exhibit demonstrates that the translation of texts and languages enhances ideas of communication.

As an exhibit, "Found in Translation" functions in a similar way to the book Sheherezade (1988), a collaboration by Holly Anderson and Janet Zweig. This flipbook works with the visual progression of a narrative embedded within the physical characteristics of its own language. Sheherezade and "Found in Translation" present the continual production of new narratives within ongoing conversations. As one interpretation of the meaning of "translation" is executed, another work in the show is formed. This burying, digging up, and relocating of context is the show's success. This exhibit could easily have been a show exploring language in the traditional sense, books in the realm of word play, innovative design, literal language translation, etc., but instead it functions on a circular level that continues to grow. The show presents the possibility of what might be found rather than what might be lost in translation. A delicate metaphor for representing our global and multicultural world, "Found in Translation" highlights the repeated human shape within seemingly disparate languages.

KRISTIN MILLER, a recent MFA graduate of Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, is an artist and writer living in San Francisco.

"FOUND IN TRANSLATION: ART AND LANGUAGE IN GLOBAL CULTURE" TRAVELS TO THE CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS IN NEW YORK (SEPTEMBER 29-DECEMBER 9, 2006) AND THEN TO THE MINNESOTA CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS IN MINNEAPOLIS (JANUARY 27-APRIL 28, 2007).

THE EXHIBITION IS ACCOMPANIED BY A CATALOG AND AN EXTENSIVE WEB SITE. FOR MORE INFORMATION ON "FOUND IN TRANSLATION" SEE WWW.BOOKLYN.ORG.