TRANSLATION AND CONVERSION: A Meditation on the Everyday

Istanbul, 2009


Nanette Yannuzzi-Macias, Sarah Schuster, Iz Oztat, Ian Warren, Suat Ogut


The central dilemma of Translation and Conversion exists within the enactment of a series of performances, actions and occurrences that speak of our desire to celebrate the liminal, repetitious, and hypnotic actions of the quotidian as it relates to place, time and notions of home.



Description of Actions


Station One:
Chance

A Table (w/large piles of paper clips, bullets and thimbles to be counted, played with, or arranged and rearranged…possibly using the simple magic trick using three cups: one with a thimble under it, one with a bullet, and one with a paperclip. Two people sitting across from each other would perform the action. One person hides each of the following under a cup and suggests the person across from them choose a cup. They do not look into each other’s eyes but only at the game being played. When the person choosing selects the cup with the bullet the games over. Many thanks to Barocco Gümüş (Arman Taş, Aram Taş, Dikran Taş, Aruş Taş, Dalita Taş), whose master Paperclips, Thimbles and table for selling wares on the street.


Station Two
Value

All of the silk-screened fabrics are piled on either a table. There is a supply of thread and needles. Someone is embroidering, or doing cross-stitch or just plain sewing into the available fabrics. This station is open to the public for participation.


Station Three
Conversion

Someone is sitting in front of a computer transcribing descriptions of the everyday coming in from all over the world (we invited people to participate) onto a large book. A Book of Days. Each participant uses a quill or bamboo pen and ink while transcribing. Each ‘conversion’ from electronic media to print media is laboriously noted. The original idea uses a fax machine hung from the ceiling at an angle. The faxes would then float down to the floor where they are picked up and entered into the book.


Station Four
Translation

Guneli Gun is a renouned Turkish language. She has translated numerous books, including several of the Turkish writer and Pulitzer Prize author Orhan Pamuk. We interview her about the craft of translation, history, women and the arts.


Station Five
Time

Place metronomes in the arched niches of the gallery. Have someone circulate around the gallery and continually wind and restart them. The person who is ‘performing’ this act would do it solemnly and continuously, waiting in one spot when they are all working and then moving slowly and systematically to rewind them as they need to be rewound.


Station Six
Poetry

Raveled and Unraveled
What does it mean to ravel and unravel something, a history, a gesture, a long ‘string’ of safety pins. Two people sit across from each other. One person has a string of safety pins looped around their hands (similar to the practice of collecting yarn into a ball for knitting) and the other person is winding it into a ball.


Station Seven
Consumption

Table with a pile of pumpkin seeds. Someone sits eating them one after another accumulating a pile. Thoughts about mindless consumption...