The Nonsite Collective's "Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" curriculum will continue at SF Camerawork with presentations by two visual artists working in a range of media:

Amy Trachtenberg and Elliot Anderson

Thurs, July 10 at 6 pm
SF Camerawork
657 Mission Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.512.2020 ext: 105

Amy Trachtenberg
Found in Translation on Paros

“In considering a place we look at passages of time, development and decay. As an outsider to any locale, we find ourselves in states of translation: both the navigator and the one in need of guiding. The physical and cultural realms are layered by an accrual of rites and texture to be misconstrued by the interloper. Without mutual consent, but as a means of interpretation, I use the camera like a tongue in search of speech. The projected slides in rhythmic sequences are a case study in questioning.”

Elliot Anderson
Weeding-In: Site Translation As Environmental Practice Read more

Pat Clifford has posted his recent "Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" talk on this site:

http://www.nonsitecollective.org/node/437

“In his New Republic essay “Cool We Can Believe In” novelist/poet Paul Beatty attempts to pin down Obama’s apparent invulnerability to closet skeletons, his anti-Tar Baby immunity, to that most ineffable of blues and jazz attitudes-sans-attitude—cool. This updated stoicism, for Beatty, is the very antithesis of translation—it does not convert, change or represent. It is before all morality, outside any ethos…”

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That’s taken from Tyrone’s talk. And I’m still sitting with “cool” as a method and a mood of operation pertinent to, even as it counters, translation. For Beatty, the unaffected equipoise that is cool is precisely what does not translate, what is untranslatable (“It's not so much Barack's blackness that makes him hard to attack so much as it is his unaffected cool, because the state of being f'able is ineffable. How can you find the words to attack something that there are no words for?”).

“Cool” appears to exist as response – a response (as a sort of low-level subsistence or maintenance) that transcends its occasion so much so that it barely surfaces as response, is unresponsive… perhaps even irresponsibly so. It’s a performance of non-reaction. Consider this in light of translation’s authoritative discourse, which desires a text so “natural,” so “fluent,” that it doesn’t even seem to be translated. Lawrence Venuti, for instance, in “The Translator’s Invisibility,” suggesting all translations necessarily either foreignize or domesticate, though ironically through a translator who must remain indiscernible (read: cool?). Read more

The text of Tyrone Williams's talk, "The Dynamics of History and Culture: 'Pale Approximations'... Who Can/May Speak?," given as part of the collective's "Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" curriculum this past Sunday nite, is now accessible as a document on this site. See:

http://www.nonsitecollective.org/WilliamsDynamics

Erick Lyle at Get Lost Travel Books
June 4 at 7 pm
1825 Market Street in San Francsico
(betwn Valencia and Guerrero)

Erick Lyle's Scam 'zine is a classic. Documenting
squats and anti-war protests, creating art and music projects, Lyle
and his friends were definitely not passive observers of San
Francisco's recent history. With the publication of his book, "On the
Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City," Lyle's writings are
now collected and accessible. In his latest Scam #6, "In the Streets
of Buenos Aires" Lyle hangs out with and introduces us to some of the
best stencil and graffiti artists in Buenos Aires. At Get Lost, he'll
read from his book and Scam #6, and show images of some of Buenos
Aires' stencil art.

Erick Lyle started writing in the 1990s, though I only first heard of
him when I read his brilliant zine, Scam # 5 ½, "Hunt's Donuts, the
Epicenter of Crime." In just a few pages, Lyle brilliantly
historicized the old donut shop with the "Open 25 Hours" sign at the
corner of Mission and 20th Streets. From Mission Street's 1940s
hey-day to its economic decline around the time Mission Street was
torn up to lay the BART tracks, Hunt's fortune's followed that of the
street. By the time it closed, Hunt's, straddling the border between
the Norteño and Sureño gangs, was known more for petty crime than
donuts. Not only was his writing sharp and concise, but Lyle's
memories of hanging out at Hunt's was part of his history of Mission
Street. After Scam #5 ½, I read a couple older editions of Scam. What
became clear is that Lyle has a talent for making history while being
able to chronicle it. Whether in response to the dot-com boom, the
lead up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, or other events that affected
the life on the streets of San Francisco, Lyle and his friends
challenged the powers that be while creatively engaging with people on
the street. Lyle's writings are now collected in On the Lower Read more