Rob Halpern's blog

“Translation as a Spiritual Practice”
A Report on Bruce Boone’s Recent Talk

On Thursday, March 7 2008 Bruce Boone gave a talk and facilitated a discussion as part of Nonsite’s “Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice” curriculum. This was a follow-up to his presentation at SF Camerawork on 2/28, where Bruce presented together with Chris Nagler and Susan Greene.

Bruce’s talk was remarkable for its range and its depth, and the report that follows here is my attempt to get at a few of its key propositions/provocations.

In attendance: Tanya Hollis, Robert Glück, David Larsen, Eirik Steinhoff, Chris Nagler, Rob Halpern and Jocelyn Saidenberg.

Bruce began with a rather startling proposition: more than just social and aesthetic, translation is a “spiritual” practice. He went on to note that some translations are spiritual while others are not, and that this amounts to a hierarchy that exceeds the valuation of “good” and “bad.” Moreover, those translations that incline toward “the spiritual” exact a physical toll on the body of the translator. This isn’t meant to be taken metaphorically. Like Jalal Toufic, who uses what often seem to be extravagant metaphors quite literally, Bruce proposes that this toll is indeed corporeal.

For Bruce, “non-spiritual” translations — say, the commercial — presuppose the false value of transparent, unimpeded transmission. By contrast, a “spiritual” translation would conceal and reveal an encounter with the pre-prosodic asociality of language. In the process of rendering the asocial as social, the translator comes into contact with the non-differentiation of meaning and meaninglessness — a kind of death — something the work of translation must go on to affirm paradoxically as a life source. Read more

One of the great things I came away with at the SPD Open House this past Saturday is SITE CITE CITY, thanks to David Buuck, who handed me a copy of his self-published collection of recent project documents, printed on the occasion of the Artifact reading @ Oakland Art gallery last month, which I sadly missed. Among other things, the writing proposes “ 'writing' as feint to draw attention to the thinking-body in socialized & activated space.” David’s chaplet is enfolded in a xeroxed notebook page with the sentence “Fuck you [ someone's first name ] for not stopping the war” hand copied 30 times — like a self-enforced punishment that can only become a curse — each iteration appearing with another name inserted. The simple exercise page has a devastating effect. First, there’s the implied recognition of our collective failure: “We fucked up and failed to stop the war.” But as this collective “we” appears as a set of individual names, one experiences an even deeper identification with our failure, and whether your own first name appears on the list or not, you can’t help but hear “I fucked up, I failed...” reverberating, unless one reads in bad faith, and exempts oneself. And yet, the curse rests on the understanding that things ought to have been otherwise, and that the power to have made them so remains frozen in each of us, as individuals, and as a collective. The page works as a negative affirmation of our social agency, currently arrested, or in suspension, and the writing activates the real sense that this agency must still be there — somewhere — ready to break forth. “It’s the not-writing that strings me along […] It’s the knot-writing that ropes me in.” There's too much to say about David's work here, and I'll have to bracket that for now. In the mean time, I hope everyone has a copy of this little book, and if not, well, maybe Buuck can let us know how to get one.

"Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" continues on Tuesday evening, April 1 with Susan Greene, who will present and discuss several of her public art projects in Palestine, while addressing the questions: What are some of the dynamics between translation and solidarity? And, when and how can public art activate social spaces?

at Get Lost Travel Books
1825 Market Street
(betwn. Valencia and Guerrero)
7 pm

Susan Greene is an artist, educator and clinical psychologist. Her
practice straddles a range of cultural arenas, new media, and public art, while focusing on borders, migrations, decolonization and memory. Greene is one of four Jewish American women artists who formed Break the Silence Mural Project in 1989. Break the Silence artists have returned to Occupied Palestine numerous times to facilitate community mural projects, conduct arts workshops, and create sculpture in refugee camps in Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Beit Hanoun and Rafah. They have presented their work to high school, university, and community audiences across the United States including at the San Francisco Art Institute, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Alternative Museum in New York. The group has also produced an award winning video. Greene has led or participated in more than 30 public art projects worldwide. Originally from NYC, she has been a resident of the Bay Area 25 years. She teaches and directs the Learning Center at the San Francisco Art Institute.

The texts from Chris Nagler's presentation at last Thursday night's event have now been posted under "Curriculm Resources." Together with Chris's translation of a chapter from Alberto Masferrer's "Cursed Currency," which is also posted on the front page, see "Panamerica circ 1930" at:

nonsitecollective.org/node/365

Excellent project/resources:

http://eipcp.net/transversal

http://eipcp.net/transversal/0606