THE ROOM IN TURIN WITH CARLA AND ALBERTO
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Monthly Archives: June 2015
TOURING WITH THE E-KIT IN THE ALPS
TOURING WITH THE E-KIT IN ROTHENBURG O.D.T. BAVARIA
Travelling from Brandenburg in North-East Germany en route to Turin via Bavaria and Switzerland, myself and Aga Tamiola stopped off in the surreal medieval town of Rothenburg ODT where we sited some more guerilla performances with The LFTT Library and Emergency Kit for Neuro-skeptics.
GUERILLA PERFORMANCES WITH THE E-KIT: DRESDEN
Our first stop heading south from the Schloss in Brandenburg was in Dresden, capital of the Free State of Saxony. Crossing the bridge over the River Elbe we both let out an audible sigh at the sight of the grand Baroque and Rococo buildings lining the waterfront. Later on in the hotel reading ‘Germany’ by J.F Dickie (TRNS 141) we found that this is a routine response for new visitors entering the city, in fact it is expected. The ‘Germany’ travel guide also told us that Dresden was the home of ‘gemütlichkeit’, an untranslatable german phrase meaning a kind of cosy warm feeling of belonging and social acceptance. We spent our time there in search of this phenomenon.
‘Language Confusion Clinic’ at Schloss Wartin (DE)
The LFTT Library collaborated with Polish artist Aga Tamiola and The Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics at The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon to produce the Language Confusion Clinic; an intimate workshop style ‘clinic’ in the beautiful surrounds of the Castle Wartin estate. Drawing on tools developed at Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld concerning language barriers and mis-translations as productive of intercultural knowledge sharing, and combining this with the neurological interests of Tamiola and the aesthetics of psychiatry – The Language Confusion Clinic employed anti-rational methods to reveal serendipitous associations in thought amongst a group of strangers.
A selection of books from The LFTT Library from differing historical and geographical cultural contexts was made available to the group as a medium of dialogue. This select slice of the archive was paired with the Emergency Kit For Neuroskeptics which added some cross associative poetic flair. Two bells were employed as signals to request a desire to read either from the Library or the Kit. The third bell signalled a wish to personally free associate with the imagery that revealed itself from the texts. During the group session strange tangents rose to the surface of our collective thoughts, enabled by this simple triangular framework.
Within the high academic context of The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon; a project initiated by the Yale University Alumni Club in Germany e.V. and the Collegium Wartinum Foundation, participants of the Language Confusion Clinic expressed a cathartic pleasure in this anti-dogmatic mode of reasoning and social knowledge sharing. The Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics is a joint project of Aga Tamiola and Sean Erickson.
Kindly Supported by
The LFTT and the ‘E-Kit’ at The Schloss Wartin Salon (DE)
The second stop on The LFTT Library Translation Tour was at The Schloss Wartin Summer Salon* in Brandenberg, Germany in collaboration with Polish artist Aga Tamiola and Emergency Kit for Neuroskeptics. Billed as ‘a survival kit to help a modern person be more human in a time of neuroscience’ the ‘E-Kit’ is a fragmented poetry anthology re-presented in a neuro-labs slide box, a receptacle which once contained cross section images of rats brains. As literal ‘slices of thought’ the E-Kit’s text fragments (coincidentally of a scale commensurate with the limits of a twitter post) are further employed in sympathy with the early Dadaists as a performance prop, allowing the subconscious thoughts of artist and audience to speak through the medium of the Kit. Read More
The LFTT Translation Tour: Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld (DE)
How can language be otherwise heard, seen, tasted or touched by and for its reader? How can reading and re-writing be a collaborative, sensory experience? In what way does the transformation of text from one medium or language into another effect its cultural perception?
In June 2015 The LFTT Library comes to Artists Unlimited as part of The LFTT Library Translation Tour, a 4,000km road-trip and practical exercise in cross-country re-interpretation. In collaboration with artist Angelika Höger The LFTT library will expand on it’s meaning potential by opening itself up to ‘foreign’ readings. A specially curated selection of the library has been made which includes books from the natural sciences, gardening, practical instruction manuals and new age self help guides and forms a kind of cultural ‘how-to’. The project asks; How do personal and local differences effect this idea of the universal ‘manual’? Are technologies like google translate enough to bridge the gap, or is something more like a real time conversation required?
This selection, which will remain at Artists Unlimited under the care of Höger until summer 2016, was launched in the gallery on the 12th of June, allowing artists and audiences the chance to meet the library and discuss further potential involvement with the project at Artists Unlimited over the course of the coming year. (Images above show the ‘Paper Work’ room at Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld. June 2015)
In addition LFTT Director, Helen Horgan invited participants to become part of The LFTT Library Tour: Film in Translation, the ongoing film document of the tour, by contributing ‘misreadings’ and ‘mistranslations’ stemming from the alien content of the newly re-contextualised books. Interested participants were invited to select from the library short texts which exhibit curious difficulties in understanding, whether stemming from language barriers or locally found confusions. These texts/confusions will be worked on and transformed becoming part of the narrative of the film as a document of ‘translation in action’. If you are interested in getting involved with The LFTT Library at Artists Unlimited or would like to learn more email The LFTT at thelfttlibrary@gmail.com or (Artists Unlimited) Angelika Höger at engelwurtz@gmx.net .
http://www.artists-unlimited.de/
An idea with reach is said to have “legs” and the word translation was historically used as a term to describe the movement of objects, particularly sacred ones, from place to place. (Image above shows the ‘Music Work’ room at Artists Unlimited, Bielefeld. June 2015)
Kindly supported by Culture Ireland.
Artists in Residence Inma Pavon & Carolyn Collier Perform at The Guesthouse Closing Night
For the Guesthouse closing night artists in residence Inma Pavon and Carolyn Collier performed work from research they had been conducting with the library throughout the past year. Dancer and movement choreographer Inma Pavon has an interest in the act of writing with and through the body, using scriptural form as a way of developing ‘signature’ gestures that can be transformed live with increasing nuance. Pavon is currently pursuing a Phd in University College Cork on the uses of chance methods in group and solo choreography and lectures in the School of Music and Theatre. Visual artist Carolyn Collier, who completed her MA in Art and Process at Crawford College of Art in 2013 is interested in the body as architectural space, more specifically how the architecture or environment becomes a second skin for the performer, often replacing the self present body with a manifest trace of the act of research. Image above is of work by Carolyn Collier. (www.carolyn-collier.com)
Inma Pavon led a ‘Group Spelling Performance’ based on Becketts ‘Quad’. The Libraries new in-house ‘Glochen-spiel’ (Bell-game) is courtesy of visual artist Barbara Wheeler-Connolly who has been collecting bells as travel souvenirs (mostly gifts) since the 70’s. She very kindly donated her collection to The LFTT in the hope that it would now have a more active life than its previous status as object of display in her home. The bell has a curious capacity to trigger sonic memories much in the way a postcard would trigger a visual one. Of course these bells are also very beautiful… http://wheelerconnolly.weebly.com/
Click here for video
The spelling grid based on Becketts ‘Quad’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPJBIvv13Bc
THE LFTT LIBRARY 
