Events

As I'm sure you're all aware, things got off to a quick start last summer, with some great events, discussions, and possible directions for community curriculum development. Since then, we've undergone a bit of a...well, let's call it a deceleration. Lots of things have contributed to this: the demands of the academic year on some members, the long and ungainly transition period with the website, etc.

More importantly, though, we haven't really seen each other as a group in quite a while. I'd like to propose getting together on Sunday, February 3rd, 6pm, at Get Lost Travel Books (1825 Market in San Francisco) to re-open some lines of communication. I know some folks will be out of town or otherwise unavailable, so let's not treat this as anything definitive, but as a forum to check in on what people's various projects are, how we can develop links and supports between them, etc. And if anyone wants to take the lead in putting together additional meetings, just let me know and I'll move the group email list development to the top of my priority list.

Informally, the following items look like good places to start a discussion:

<ul>
<li>where the collective is at and where it might be going</li>
<li>reactivating nonsite's project(s)</li>
<li>ongoing and upcoming curricula--"Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" and the "Archive/Anti-Archive" work--with their related events</li>
<li>ideas and proposals for future activity</li>
<li>website</li>
<li>other agenda items, open for suggestion...</li></ul>

All registered Nonsite users can now subscribe to the two discussion lists/web discussion boards directly from their user profile pages (i.e., the "My account" link).

Just click the "Mailing Lists" tab in your profile, or in the User Tools menu in the right sidebar, and you can choose which list(s) you'd like to get and set a password for yourself. You'll receive a confirmation email to the email address you used when you registered for the website, and that's all there is to it.

The email lists are fully integrated with the two <a href="/forum">discussion boards</a> on the website, meaning you can post to the list and have your message and its replies appear on the web board -- or vice versa. In order to take full advantage of this, it's preferable that everyone who wants to participate in the web discussion boards also subscribe to the email lists. If you don't, you can still post on the website, but your messages will not be sent to the email list, thus decreasing the likelihood of people replying to you.

If you're worried about clogging up your inbox, go ahead and subscribe, then reply to the confirmation email. Once you do this, you can go back to your "Mailing Lists" options and set both lists to "nomail" just by clicking a button.

Any new site users registering after today will be automatically asked if they want to subscribe to the discussion lists when they first register.

Finally, if you're one of the few people who went ahead and subscribed to the lists using the old method, please go ahead and re-subscribe through your user profile now. You're actually still subscribed, and you'll get a message from the list software telling you exactly this. But this way both the website and the backend listserv software will know about your subscription.

Translation as Social & Aesthetic Practice

Curriculum Description :

In a world of hardening borders and contested spaces, translation means more than just the unimpeded movement from one language or another. This Nonsite Curriculum presses at the limits of what “translation” is and can do. As artists, writers, activists and citizens, we are translating all the time: between media, archives, audiences, and communities. Smooth transmission tends to be frustrated, however, often making social antagonisms legible. How do our various projects negotiate this frustration and this legibility, while activating material in the spaces between languages and cultures: not only texts, images and artifacts, but also borders, histories, documents, and even policy? And how does the translator-citizen inhabit those spaces, readying our attention, as migrating social imaginaries lead the way toward new forms of thought and action?

“Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice” addresses these questions and the stakes they raise through presentations, plays, readings, talks and discussions.

The curriculum is open to everyone at all levels of involvement, including the planning of future events.

Event:

Join us Thursday evening, February 28, for a trio of presentations by:

Bruce Boone: Reading and discussing his translations of Pascal Quignard.

Susan Greene: Presenting and discussing her public art projects in Occupied Palestine.

Chris Nagler: Reading and discussing his translations of Alberto Masferrer.

SF Camerawork
657 Mission Street
Thursday, Feb. 28
6-8 pm
415-512-2020
sfcamerawork.org

In the weeks immediately following this event, there will be a series of informal discussions by all three of the participants.

Bruce Boone: Thursday, March 6.
Chris Nagler: Monday, March 10.
Susan Greene: Tuesday, April 1.

For information regarding times and locations, contact rob.halpern@gmail.com.

from Albucius, by Pascal Quignard

translated by Bruce Boone

"Reader"

When the present offers little joy and the inevitable months ahead bring only the prospect of repetition, monotony can be avoided by raiding the past. The thighs of the dead open, their stomachs (sweet with the passage of twenty-one hundred years) join and heal again. Secrets, certain puzzles better left not spoken, are dug up, and from little wooden beams, and from bird’s down, a nest is fashioned for some older patrician woman, a nest of the ancient Hebrew type. It’s a protection.

Things that once were true provide greater protection for falsity, and for the wishes stirred up by falsity, than some simple anachronistic plot or other, pieced together, scavenged from god-knows-where. Caius Albucius Silus existed. So did his declamations. I invented the nest I plunked Albucius into, Albucius with whatever warmth he has, his little life, his rheumatism, the few greens I threw in for the salad, and his melancholy. His ghost may thereby be gratified with a few colors, pleasures, perhaps a death even—who knows? I love this world and the stories whose invention is made possible by their absence.

In June 1989, I was alone and I was tired. I had jotted down 60 of these pages while seated on a wooden bench. Huge solemn crows flew across the ramparts of the imperial gardens in Tokyo.

Join us Thursday evening, February 28, for a trio of presentations by:

Bruce Boone: Reading and discussing his translations of Pascal Quignard.

Susan Greene: Presenting and discussing her public art projects in Occupied Palestine.

Chris Nagler: Reading and discussing his translations of Alberto Masferrer.

SF Camerawork
657 Mission Street
Thursday, Feb. 28
6-8 pm
415-512-2020
sfcamerawork.org

<del>People trying to sign up for the follow-up discussions to last night's event at SF Camerawork might have noticed a bug in our captcha challenge system today. I'm working on resolving this issue, but until I get it fixed, I've had to remove the captcha challenge from the online signup forms.</del>

<del>In order to avoid a flood of emails from spambots, this means that I've also had to close the signups to all but registered site users. If you'd like to attend one of these events, but aren't ready to set up a user account on the site, please point your browser to the site administrator contact form and send me a note. I'll make sure the event organizer gets your signup request.</del>

<del>Sorry for any inconvenience this causes -- it's a busy day at work today, so I might not get the issue fixed until the weekend. Thanks for your patience.</del>

This issue has now been fixed. Please note that signups are now available at the top of the event posting as a tab, rather than as a link at the bottom.

"Translation as Social and Aesthetic Practice" will continue over the
next month--beginning this Thursday night-- with several informal discussions facilitated by Bruce Boone (on translation and Pascal Quignard: 3/6), Chris Nagler (on translation and Alberto Masferrer: 3/10 ), Susan Greene (on translation and public art practices in occupied Palestine: 4/1).

Please join us!

Information about any or all of these discussions--as well as related
materials--can be accessed easily by clicking on the event, and then following the prompts by way of the sign-up tab.