I spent yesterday at a seminar at the Henry Moore Institute here in
Leeds which was on _Art and Translation_
it was held in parallel with the exhibition _at one remove_ which
considers issues of translation in contemporary (visual) art practice
one of the contributors was Fiona Banner who spoke (and showed
slides) mainly about her work _The Nam_ which is a book containing
six of her transcriptions of Hollywood Vietnam films
these originated in the wall drawings which cris referred to
though these were not transcriptions of the script of the films, nor
even screenplays but were, written descriptions of what was on the
screen, including the sounds, words, visuals, captions etc.
reading the works on the wall one is aware of the scale, of the
texture, of the labour involved in the works, in book form other
concerns come into play -- what is the relation between this writing
and a novel, or poetry? what sort of writing is this which will
include almost no metaphors (something Banner consciouly attempted)
and no references to smell, taste, texture on the part of the
narrator?
Banner also showed how she has developed the project of the book,
_The Nam_; with poster advertising, and a mobile library van, the
posters enter into the wider text(ure) of city walls referred to in
another message;
the day as a whole raised a number of interesting topics in the area
of text in visual art, and in relation to translation as a mode which
we use all the time in our interaction with the owrld, with others,
with texts;
interesting comments also on Shane Cullen's work; he has done varied
pieces over the last decade and those I have seen have worked with
text, with logos, slogans, public announcments, legal documents,
where the viewer becomes newly aware of words, writing which has
dropped below the level of being read, which has become the
background pattern of our daily lives; the work with the hunger
strike documents is different in that there is both a private and a
public element to the communications (they were published in An
Phoblacht) and they touch on deeply personal, traumatic experiences;
all the best
Mark
Mark Leahy
School of English
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
United Kingdom
tel: 0044 (0)113 2334739
fax: 0044 (0)113 2334774
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