L’artiste Antoni Muntadas
et le cycle on translation.
Dernièrement, il était possible de rencontrer l’artiste espagnol Antoni Muntadas à la Biennale de Venise, 2005. Préparant déjà ce dossier sur TRANS, notre attention a été attirée, dans le Pavillon Espagnol, par l’exposition de son oeuvre : On TRANSLATION : I GIARDINI. Dans ce cadre, l’artiste explorait le phénomène de codification, interprétation et transformation des faits de culture contemporaine, approchés à partir de différentes perspectives. Sachant que toute perception requiert engagement, l’exposition profilait une réflexion portant sur les pensées que la mémoire attache à certains espaces publics. Un film montrait, simultanément, la manière dont les hommes s’approprient l’espace public de manière privée (notamment par l’usage du téléphone portable).
Même rapide, un relevé des différentes déclinaisons de TRANS s’imposait dans cette exposition. TRANS, c’est tout autant TRA-duire (Trans-ducere), que TRANS-férer (échange, transfert de monnaie), ou TRANS-mettre (le même standard partout dans le monde), voire TRANS-muer (s’approprier des espaces), ou encore TRANS-poser (les pavillons de la biennale de Venise depuis l’inauguration).
Aussi avons-nous demandé à Antoni Muntadas puis à Bartomeu Mari de nous aider à poser le problème à partir de cette œuvre. On sait, par exemple, que le thème ON TRANSLATION : THE AUDIENCE a été ouvert, sous la forme d’un autre cycle, par Muntadas, en 1998. Il consiste en interventions en public, sous divers médias.
Antoni Muntadas
On Translation : The Audience.
On Translation : The Audience is the title of the project that Muntadas has developped with Witte de With from October 1998 to september 1999, in various institutions in the city of Rotterdam. The work took place over twelve months, « happening » every four weeks in a different institution ; it also provides the title for an exhibition which includes other significant projects by the artist, The Board Room (1987) and Between the Frames (1983-1993). This text develops and explores essential aspects of the new work, through notions related to the concepts of translation, reception, and interpretation in today’s culture. If the field of the action is limited to institutions, the projects appeals to the critical capacity of the public to convert perception into meaning.
On Translation is the name of a series of works which Muntadas has been carrying out in various countries and in very different contextes since 1994. On Translation : The Pavillion (1995) focused on the simultaneous translations within an international summit. On Translation : The Games (Atlanta 1996) analyzed the transformation of national values and symbols during the Olympics ; On Translation : The Internet project (Documenta X, 1997) developed the translation of one sentence through 23 different languages over the internet, an its applications ; On Translation : The Transmission (Cyberconf 5, Atlanta-Madrid) dealt with the live transmission of a conference ; and On Translation : The Bank (New York, 1998) dealt with currencies exchange within the international banking system. Further elements of the project include On Translation : The Monuments (Budapest) ; On Tranlation : Culoarea (Arad) ; On Translation : La Mesa de Negocaciones (Madrid) ; On Translation : El Aplauso (Bogota).
On Translation : The Audience turns our attention to the receiver who completes the circuit of communication, to the user of culture in its most diverse manifestations, not only institutionalized, but also those which take place in the privacy at home. It is additionally a reflection of the city of Rotterdam, through eleven of its cultural institutions. The project has occupied an important place in the Witte de With web site. Through the latter, the visitor has been catapulted toward the various institutions in their electronic spaces, looping the loop that runs from image to site and site to image. Beyond the specificity of each of the institutions which have participated in the project – by welcoming the « visual artifact » whereby it is materialized, ,and appropriating - if the work has functioned as a question mark with respect to two fundamental domains : on the one hand, the public which « receives » cultural productions (who are the publics of culture today, how do they behave in the spaces specifically devoted to culture, what use do they make of cultural productions ?) ; and on the other hand, the relations between the languages, vocabularies, and grammars of the different artistic fields, and the institutions devoted to them (how do the institutions limit, protect, or separate the cultural categories and to what extent are these conventions valid instruments for understanding ?). As spaces in which social rituals are performed, cultural institutions represent zones of concentration or condensation in which we can observe the relation between the individual and the collective, where the creation of value and meaning takes place.
For Muntadas, On Translation : The Audience constitutes a « modest intervention » which places itself at the confines of visibility and perception, its discretion accentuated by its mobility. It does not fulfill a sociological or demonstrative agenda, but appears as an essay on « non-perception ». Thus the warning placed in a prominent location takes on its full meaning : PERCEPTION REQUIRES INVOLVEMENT underscores the difference between looking and seeing, listening and hearing, reading and understanding. On Translation : The Audience develops the intention to center the object of the art experience on an active exercise of the individual’s critical capacity : « What are wee seing ? » asked one of the artist’s projects, Media Eyes, as early as 1981, stressing the omnipresence of advertising language and its persistence in our visual habits.
Arts is an activity which appears through presentation and which lives in the physical and intellectual experience of the individuals. Institutions inscribed within a tradition identify as a cultural event whatever « naturally » happens within them, i.e. whatever is repeated there : they create habit. The conventions of art and culture depend on the habit of encountering certain things in certain places. As spaces devoted to perpetuation, institutions shape a landscape or circuit through which tradition and innovation flow. Unlike these « protected spaces », the public space, the street, offers an endless jostle of situations whose principle characteristic is indetermination. Muntadas has chosen intermediary spaces, transit zones where the functions mix, before the strict determination of the contents of the institution itself.
The territory of the transformation of objects and events into values is where On Translation… situates its field of activities. By translation we litterally understand the transport of the same meaning from on language to another, and by extension, from one system of signs to another. A fact inherent to all intercultural exchanges, the act of translation always constitutes an act of interpretation. And where art is concerned, it is in reception and use that the need for a critically conscious activity on the part of the receiver resides. This project is a « case of study » that considers the institution as an apparatus for transmission and translation between cultural objects and the public – an audience which is too often considered solely in terms of quantities and numbers, and not in termes of quality.
Audiences and Translation
by Bartomeu Mari.
Référence : Muntadas, On Translation : The Audience, Witte de With, Center for contemporary art, Rotterdam, 1999.
et le cycle on translation.
Dernièrement, il était possible de rencontrer l’artiste espagnol Antoni Muntadas à la Biennale de Venise, 2005. Préparant déjà ce dossier sur TRANS, notre attention a été attirée, dans le Pavillon Espagnol, par l’exposition de son oeuvre : On TRANSLATION : I GIARDINI. Dans ce cadre, l’artiste explorait le phénomène de codification, interprétation et transformation des faits de culture contemporaine, approchés à partir de différentes perspectives. Sachant que toute perception requiert engagement, l’exposition profilait une réflexion portant sur les pensées que la mémoire attache à certains espaces publics. Un film montrait, simultanément, la manière dont les hommes s’approprient l’espace public de manière privée (notamment par l’usage du téléphone portable).
Même rapide, un relevé des différentes déclinaisons de TRANS s’imposait dans cette exposition. TRANS, c’est tout autant TRA-duire (Trans-ducere), que TRANS-férer (échange, transfert de monnaie), ou TRANS-mettre (le même standard partout dans le monde), voire TRANS-muer (s’approprier des espaces), ou encore TRANS-poser (les pavillons de la biennale de Venise depuis l’inauguration).
Aussi avons-nous demandé à Antoni Muntadas puis à Bartomeu Mari de nous aider à poser le problème à partir de cette œuvre. On sait, par exemple, que le thème ON TRANSLATION : THE AUDIENCE a été ouvert, sous la forme d’un autre cycle, par Muntadas, en 1998. Il consiste en interventions en public, sous divers médias.
Antoni Muntadas
On Translation : The Audience.
On Translation : The Audience is the title of the project that Muntadas has developped with Witte de With from October 1998 to september 1999, in various institutions in the city of Rotterdam. The work took place over twelve months, « happening » every four weeks in a different institution ; it also provides the title for an exhibition which includes other significant projects by the artist, The Board Room (1987) and Between the Frames (1983-1993). This text develops and explores essential aspects of the new work, through notions related to the concepts of translation, reception, and interpretation in today’s culture. If the field of the action is limited to institutions, the projects appeals to the critical capacity of the public to convert perception into meaning.
On Translation is the name of a series of works which Muntadas has been carrying out in various countries and in very different contextes since 1994. On Translation : The Pavillion (1995) focused on the simultaneous translations within an international summit. On Translation : The Games (Atlanta 1996) analyzed the transformation of national values and symbols during the Olympics ; On Translation : The Internet project (Documenta X, 1997) developed the translation of one sentence through 23 different languages over the internet, an its applications ; On Translation : The Transmission (Cyberconf 5, Atlanta-Madrid) dealt with the live transmission of a conference ; and On Translation : The Bank (New York, 1998) dealt with currencies exchange within the international banking system. Further elements of the project include On Translation : The Monuments (Budapest) ; On Tranlation : Culoarea (Arad) ; On Translation : La Mesa de Negocaciones (Madrid) ; On Translation : El Aplauso (Bogota).
On Translation : The Audience turns our attention to the receiver who completes the circuit of communication, to the user of culture in its most diverse manifestations, not only institutionalized, but also those which take place in the privacy at home. It is additionally a reflection of the city of Rotterdam, through eleven of its cultural institutions. The project has occupied an important place in the Witte de With web site. Through the latter, the visitor has been catapulted toward the various institutions in their electronic spaces, looping the loop that runs from image to site and site to image. Beyond the specificity of each of the institutions which have participated in the project – by welcoming the « visual artifact » whereby it is materialized, ,and appropriating - if the work has functioned as a question mark with respect to two fundamental domains : on the one hand, the public which « receives » cultural productions (who are the publics of culture today, how do they behave in the spaces specifically devoted to culture, what use do they make of cultural productions ?) ; and on the other hand, the relations between the languages, vocabularies, and grammars of the different artistic fields, and the institutions devoted to them (how do the institutions limit, protect, or separate the cultural categories and to what extent are these conventions valid instruments for understanding ?). As spaces in which social rituals are performed, cultural institutions represent zones of concentration or condensation in which we can observe the relation between the individual and the collective, where the creation of value and meaning takes place.
For Muntadas, On Translation : The Audience constitutes a « modest intervention » which places itself at the confines of visibility and perception, its discretion accentuated by its mobility. It does not fulfill a sociological or demonstrative agenda, but appears as an essay on « non-perception ». Thus the warning placed in a prominent location takes on its full meaning : PERCEPTION REQUIRES INVOLVEMENT underscores the difference between looking and seeing, listening and hearing, reading and understanding. On Translation : The Audience develops the intention to center the object of the art experience on an active exercise of the individual’s critical capacity : « What are wee seing ? » asked one of the artist’s projects, Media Eyes, as early as 1981, stressing the omnipresence of advertising language and its persistence in our visual habits.
Arts is an activity which appears through presentation and which lives in the physical and intellectual experience of the individuals. Institutions inscribed within a tradition identify as a cultural event whatever « naturally » happens within them, i.e. whatever is repeated there : they create habit. The conventions of art and culture depend on the habit of encountering certain things in certain places. As spaces devoted to perpetuation, institutions shape a landscape or circuit through which tradition and innovation flow. Unlike these « protected spaces », the public space, the street, offers an endless jostle of situations whose principle characteristic is indetermination. Muntadas has chosen intermediary spaces, transit zones where the functions mix, before the strict determination of the contents of the institution itself.
The territory of the transformation of objects and events into values is where On Translation… situates its field of activities. By translation we litterally understand the transport of the same meaning from on language to another, and by extension, from one system of signs to another. A fact inherent to all intercultural exchanges, the act of translation always constitutes an act of interpretation. And where art is concerned, it is in reception and use that the need for a critically conscious activity on the part of the receiver resides. This project is a « case of study » that considers the institution as an apparatus for transmission and translation between cultural objects and the public – an audience which is too often considered solely in terms of quantities and numbers, and not in termes of quality.
Audiences and Translation
by Bartomeu Mari.
Référence : Muntadas, On Translation : The Audience, Witte de With, Center for contemporary art, Rotterdam, 1999.