The rationale of the conference is to explore how the different arts translate across disciplines and to establish exchanges that will allow arts disciplines to engage with contemporary debates and concerns in a non-hierarchical way.

Solent University, Southampton (Zoom webinar)

Argument

The rationale of the conference is to explore how the different arts translate across disciplines and to establish exchanges that will allow arts disciplines to engage with contemporary debates and concerns in a non-hierarchical way. In this context the term ‘translation’ is taken from Walter Benjamin through Jacques Derrida’s interpretation, which can be read as yet another translation in a long line of poetic translations. Translation, as Derrida points out, implies a hierarchy: the translation is generally perceived as secondary to the translated material. The translator is thus always indebted to the text/material which is translated, and to its author. And yet, the translator also transforms the translated material and makes it relevant for a different context. The act of translation involves a level of betrayal analogous to the betrayal of the ‘creative act’ it translates (each creative work betrays a tradition through the creative moment). Hence this conference’s use of the term ‘poetic translation’ with reference to the hierarchical tradition and the way it is being transformed through translations to create non-hierarchical structures of exchange. For the ‘creative act’, by definition, introduces an innovative moment. It is this ‘poetic’ innovation, Benjamin insists, in which ‘the unfathomable, the mysterious, the “poetic”, can be reproduced; but only if the translator is also a poet [artist]’.

Programme

16 Wednesday

9.30 – 10.00 – Welcome and Introduction (Dr. Nicola Foster)

10:00 to 11:00: 3 papers -15 min each, 5 min Q and A

Medium Specificity 

Chair Dr. Flavia Loscialpo with Laura Leahy

• One Medium Through Another: Displacement and Criticism in October Matthew Bowman, University of Suffolk
• Table for five. Moncomble Philippine , Architect
• The Plurality of Plasma: BioArt as Translation Medium Blue Grindrod , Designer, multimedia artist

11:00 to 11:15 Discussion

11:20- to 12:20 : 3 papers - 15 min each, 5 min Q and A

Activism – Performance

Chair Dr. Tom Slevin with Maja Hill and Denise Clarke

• History, translation and critical dissensus: Exploring the political potential of artist residencies in museums Alex Reynolds ,Poole Museum, Dorset
• One000plateaus: cross-disciplinary happenings and the radical ontology of utopian poetics Roy Hanney, Solent University
• The activation of performance art works as a translation process Daniela Felix Martins and Bianca Tinoco ,University of Brasília(UnB)

12:20 to 12:40 Discussion

14.00 – 15:20: 4 papers 15 min each, 5 min Q and A

Translation across mediums 

Dr. Atsu Ito with Matthew Keehan and Emma Justice

• Translating from one art to another, Richter’s trans-artistic landscape Anthi-Danaé Spathoni, Centre Pompidou, Paris
• From Canvas into the Theatre Magritte – The Cloud Man Zsanett Lengyel, University of Pécs, Hungary
• Abanindranath Tagore’s Khuddur Jatra: a creative adventure at the crossroads of modernity Rupsa Kundu, Art historian
• Reference, Figurativity, and Performativity: Translational Poetics of Marina Abramović “Seven Easy Pieces” Egri Petra, University of Pécs, Hungary

15:25 – 15:55 Discussion

16:00 – 17:00 Keynote speaker Nicky Marsh Professor of English Studies, Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Southampton

17 Thursday

10:00 – 11:45 : 5 papers 15 min each, 5 min Q and A

Translating exhibitions 

Chair Dr. Nicola Foster with Sylvia Schlegel and Deborah Goatly-Birch

• On Translations – a Curatorial Project on confusion and hesitation Carolina Rito, Coventry University
• Museum and Novel in dialogue: Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence Maja Hill, Solent University
• Layers of translation and transaction between book and exhibition: W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and ‘Lines of Sight: Sebald’s East Anglia’ at Norwich Castle Museum Pat Hurrell, University of Suffolk

5 min break

• Mindful Circulations: Rethinking Curatorial Practice with Benjamin, LeGuin and Césaire Kerstin Winking, Leiden University, Netherlands
• Restaging as Translation: Reconstructing Palle Nielsen’s ‘The Model- A Model for Qualitative Society’ (1968) Dudley, Laura E., University of Leicester & Derby Museums

11:45 to 12:15 Discussion

14:00 to 15:20 4 papers 15 min each, 5 min Q and A

Translating across literature poetry and art

Chair Dr. Matthew Bowman with Michelle Pocok

• A Completed Portrait of Abstract Expressionist Film: An Adaptation of a Poem By Gertrude Stein Carl Schmitz, Independent art historian
• Lines of transition: Translation in the work of Cy Twombly Nadine Henrich, Freie Universität Berlin
• Lygia Clark’s Caminhando: Painting, sculpture and participation through the lens of poetry Andrew Chesher, Chelsea College of Arts, London
• Mario Giacomelli translator Irene Caravita, Independent Art Historian

15:20 to 15: 40 Discussion

15:45 to 16:15 2 papers max 10 min, 5min Q and A

Translation as art practice

Chair Dr. Sebastian Hegarty with India Lawton

• “READING… entre les lignes” Ingrid Cogne, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
• CatChat: A Translational Enterprise of an Inter-Species Poetic Exchange at a Fictitious Museum Michal B. Ron independent art historian, Hannah Bruckmüller independent art historian, Noa Ginzburg artist

Concluding notes Nicola Foster

For more info please visit Poetic Translations