In Other Words
CCS Bard Galleries
“… the way I think is / I think what I see.” – A.R. Ammons, Ommateum* It is common to rephrase what we say, perhaps to add a nuance of meaning, perhaps to make ourselves easier to understand. When doing so, we often use a phrase such as “in other words” that helps to work out and explain further the meaning of unfamiliar words in context and, perhaps, familiar words in new contexts. But the significance of In Other Words isn’t merely that there’s more to say, since there’s always more to say. Its significance lies in recognizing what has been excluded, transformed, or manipulated when we rephrase, or more accurately, when we translate another language into our own, bringing closer what was far away. The works by Francois Bucher, Antonio Caro, Adriana Duque, Artemio Narro, Lucas Ospina, Catalina Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Rojas and Bruce Yonemoto (in collaboration with Raymond Pettibon), involve acts of translation, represent translation and are subject to translation. These works have a “bilingual” quality that implies the recognition of the self and the other in situations of cultural exchange. In its broad meaning, bilingual becomes a metaphor for works that are not rooted in any particular context thus are able to travel and communicate wherever they go. The circulation and reception mechanisms these works employ, their symbolic value for cultural translation, their travel-ability necessary for cultural exchange, the rebound qualities or boomerang-type trajectory they depict, and their translatability, is what allows them to speak to various audiences outside their contexts while responding to a viewer’s need for reading and to access information about what is foreign and strange.. *Ommateum, in Latin, each one of the eyes in a compound eye such as a fly has.
In other words, the instruments of so-called globalization and worldwide circulation of information convey the impression that these paths of transmission and translation are neutral. The task of the translator might be seen as one that sacrifices fidelity in exchange for transmissibility, so resorting to the famous Italian epigram “Traduttore—Traditore!”the supposed neutrality of translation is called into question.
Translations are screening devices, in the same way that television, the Internet or even the exhibition space screens information, excluding and including images for the control of meaning and signifiers. The works translated for this exhibition are affected by the new “hosting” context, the viewers, the proximity to other works, and even by the curator’s intentions. They have change, they are affected, but they will also affect in exchange.
The works by Francois Bucher, Antonio Caro, Adriana Duque, Artemio Narro, Lucas Ospina, Catalina Rodriguez, Miguel Angel Rojas and Bruce Yonemoto (in collaboration with Raymond Pettibon), question the power that media has when circulating translations of events, they question our relationship to places as informed by media, violence as filtered through the Hollywood entertainment machine and history understood as a construction of unequivocal facts.
These works require a kind of double reading—an ability to recognize the space between languages, and the hybrid sites of meaning that form in the gaps of cultures. They invite to suspect the technical capacities, practices and institutions that create reality, politics or history. To avoid new presuppositions, to have a stereoscopic vision, to read with a compound eye such as a fly has, to see in fiction the truth and also what is hidden.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/rodriguez.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Catalina Rodriguez [1]
_ J _, 2000
Single channel video, 5:30 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/yonemoto.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Bruce Yonemoto [2]
_ Sounds Like the Sound of Music _, 2005
Single channel video installation with audio, 3:19 minutes
Courtesy Gray Kapernekas Gallery, New York
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/pettibon1.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/pettibon2.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Bruce Yonemoto and Raymond Pettibon [3]
_ Kill the Queen ,_ 2005 and _ Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head ,_ 2005
Ink on paper in handmade frame
Courtesy Gray Kapernekas Gallery, New York
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/rojas.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Miguel Angel Rojas [7]
_ Nowadays _, 2001
Round coca leaf cutouts
Courtesy of the artist
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/narro.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Artemio Narro [8]
_ Apoohcalypse Now _, 2002
Single channel video Installation with camouflage tent, 8:26 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
| {src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/trans_sp.gif”, alt: nil, title: nil} |
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/ospina.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Pedro Manrique Figueroa / Lucas Ospina [4]
_ Pedro Manrique Figueroa, The Precursor of Collage in Columbia: Five American Collages _ / Pedro Manrique Figueroa, El Precursor del Collage en Colombia: Cinco Collages Americanos , 2003
Five paper collages accompanied by text interpretations in Spanish and English, mounted on a wood structure
Courtesy of the artist
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/caro.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Antonio Caro [5]
_ Colombia – Coca Cola _, 1977
Silkscreen over fabric
Courtesy of Francois Bucher and Tanya Leighton, Berlin
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/duque.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Adriana Duque [6]
Ricitos de Oro (Goldielocks), 2003
Digital photograph
Courtesy of the artist
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/bucher.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Francois Bucher [9]
_ Forever Live, The Case of K.Gun ,_ 2006
Singel channel video installation with audio and newspaper clippings, 14 minutes. Courtesy of the artist
|
[1] “I got out in, uh, about a half-hour earlier to get a good spot to shoot some pictures. I found a spot down near that park, near the underpass. And as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this. Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn’t say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting. That’s about all, I’m just sick, I can’t…” A. Zapruder on a live broadcast for ABC on Nov.22, 1963. *The Abraham Zapruder home movie is the only known film of Kennedy’s entire assassination. It is a silent, 8mm color record of the motorcade just before, during, and immediately after the shooting.
[2] Quechua was the language of the Inca Empire, and is today spoken in various dialects by some 9.6 million people throughout the Andes. Quechua’s conjugation depends on mental state, veracity of knowledge, and spatial and temporal relationships. It doesn’t have a written orthography, thus remains essentially as an oral language.
[3] Jabba the Hutt, a character in “Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi” (1983) spoke Huttese. According to the Behind the Magic CD-Rom, Huttese language was derived from Quechua, whereas Jabba derives from the English jabber; to talk rapidly, indistinctly, or unintelligibly in indistinct speech.
[4] Pedro Manrique Figueroa is “curated/created” by Lucas Ospina.
[5] Coca Sek (“Coca of the Sun” in Nasa dialect) is a carbonated drink made since 2005 from coca leaf extract by an indigenous community in southern Colombia. Coca-Cola spokeswoman said such competitors are welcome, but as for Coca-Cola ingredients, Cocaine has never been one, though she declined to say whether cocaine-free coca extract is part of the drink’s secret recipe.
[6] The various hues of blondness color about 2% of the world’s population. In 2002 BBC news reported that a German scientist concluded that within the span of 200 years blonds will disappear. The cause would be lack of a recessive gene in nations of mixed heritage, where dominant genes (brownhair, black hair, brown eyes) “overthrow” them. The World Health Organization(WHO) denied this hypothesis.
[7] Coca (koka in Quechua) is a plant native to northwestern South America that contains about 0.2% of the alkaloid cocaine in its fresh leaves. Indigenous people have used its leaves since ancient times as a stimulant to help ignore hunger, thirst, fatigue and symptoms of mild altitude sickness.
[8] Lieutenant Harry Colebourn, Veterinary Officer of the Canadian Army, bought in 1914 an American black bear cub that was tied to a bench in Ontario’s train station. The cub became the mascot of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade, but in Dec. 1914, while passing through London on their way to war, the cub was left at the London Zoo for her safety. The bear was named affectionately by her keepers, Winnie (after Winnipeg, Colebourn’s hometown).
[9]Katharine Gun was a translator (from Chinese to English), working with the British secret service, who chose to leak information compromising the U.S. and U.K. governments in their push for a U.N. resolution for the invasion of Iraq. Gun disclosed their plans to illegally wiretap the delegations of the Security Council holding the balance of power at the U.N. She was finally acquitted by the government of the U.K. when it became clear to them that her court case would become a trial on the war’s legality. *Franz Kafka’s allegory “Before the Law” is interpreted live over a telephone line by K. Gun. At the time of Bucher’s recording, Kafka’s text was completely new to Gun, as she re-translated the allegory live from Chinese to English
FLOOR PLAN
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/floor_plan.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
EXHIBITION VIEWS
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view1.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view2.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Catalina Rodreguez J, 2000 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view3.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Bruce Yonemoto, Sounds Like the Sound of Music 2005 Photographs by © Chris Kendall
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view4.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Bruce Yonemoto and Raymond Pettibon, Kill the Queen, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view5.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Pedro Manrique Figueroa / Lucas Ospina, Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view6.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Pedro Manrique Figueroa / Lucas Ospina, Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view7.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view8.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view9.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view10.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view11.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view12.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
In Other Words Exhibition Room 2 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view13.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Francois Bucher, Forever LIve, The Case of K, Gun, 2005 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006
{src: “http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/student/2006/theses/inotherwords/images/exhib_view14.jpg”, alt: “In Other Words”, title: nil}
Francois Bucher, Forever LIve, The Case of K, Gun, 2005 Photographs by © Chris Kendall 2006