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.