First exhibition of Translation Games
“What We Made, or The Only Think About You That We Could Fathom”
Curated by Ricarda Vidal (King's College London) and Jenny Chamarette (QMUL)
On 31 July the first exhibition of Translation Games opened, which marked the end of the project’s pilot phase and showcased the results of the previous two months’ work. The quality of the linguistic, textile and artistic translations by far exceeded the curators' expectations. There was an impressive range of how well the notion of translation worked between the different media.
Between 2 June and 5 July students from King’s College London and Queen Mary, University of London translated the original text “What We Made”, which was commissioned from London-based American writer Colleen Becker, from English into Urdu and French, from French into Turkish and Italian, from Italian into Spanish, from Spanish into Portuguese and back into French, from the second French translation into German and Romanian. At each stage the text was also translated back into English. In a parallel strand the text was translated into film by Anna Cady, from film into ceramics by Matt Rowe, from ceramics into audiovisuals by Aura Satz and from audiovisuals into choreography by Mayuri Boonham. The English original and the Spanish and Turkish translations were translated into textile by Scott Ramsay Kyle (embroidery), Shaheen Kasmani (silk painting) and Reyhan Yazici (two complete outfits with shoes and accessories).
All the translations are available on the Translation Games website, which was developed by exhibition designer Alex Spyropoulos.
For the exhibition, the curators were confronted with the challenge of exhibiting not only the films and object-based translations but also the linguistic translations in an engaging and immersive way which would allow visitors to experience the nuances of the different languages in all their breadth and depth and appeal to the tactile, visual and aural senses. Digital artist Katja Knecht created a sound installation with glass jars and speakers which ‘trapped’ a recording of each translation in a sound jar which could be opened or closed, ‘releasing’ or ‘imprisoning’ the voices. Together with eight of the student translators (Ana Amália da Silva, Andre Freixeiro, Bethany Pyner, Christina Vieira Barry, Emilie Oleron, Georgina Chen-Prosser, Katie Chadd, and Raluca Chereji) a performance was developed, which included the sound jars, a simple choreography and sequenced and synchronised readings from the different translations to demonstrate the many transformations the original text underwent as it transformed from “What We Made” into “The Only Thing About You That We Could Fathom”.
The curators also wanted to capture the playful and performative element of Translation Games and invite the visitors to play themselves. Visitors could navigate their way through the website and compare the different versions online or play with the interactive installation of the different English translations. Ricarda Vidal designed the flip-book style exhibition catalogue, which allowed readers to take the exhibition home with them and try out different combinations of languages, textiles and artworks.
In the run-up to the exhibition and during the opening itself the public were invited to take part in a Twitter competition: the challenge was to create the shortest tweet version of Colleen’s original text. The winner was Steven Wilson with “Buddhist + boxer = dukkha”.
The physical exhibition closed on 2 August, but continues in the virtual realm on the Translation Games website. Ricarda Vidal and Jenny Chamarette will continue their work on Translation Games and are currently developing a programme of talks and workshops while also planning the next exhibition.