Texts and paper will be provided; please bring a pen.

The War of Words contains at least one fruitful struggle: the clash of languages on the battlefield of the translator’s brain, as loaded vocabularies mass and charge. Yet no struggle is more pleasurable since, of all readers, the translator enters into the most intimate relationship with the source text. But what if you know only one language? Or don’t know the language you want to translate? To this dilemma solutions will be offered by Writhing Society leaders Wendy Walker and Tom La Farge.

Homophonic Translation

There’s more to translate than just the sense of a text; there’s also the sound. Homophonic translation strips the sense out of the original text and keeps only the sounds, then finds English words that repeat those sounds as nearly as possible. Participants will be given text to translate from some little-known language, and we will see what sort of sense different people make from that sound-montage. [Those ambitious to translate both sound and sense will be given that opportunity.]

Fenollosa

Ezra Pound admired Chinese ideograms because they made words into images. But he didn’t know Chinese. To make his translations, he asked his friend Ernest Fenollosa, a professor at Harvard, to make a character-by-character translation of some classic Chinese poems, giving the possible meanings of each character. Since the ideograms themselves do not declare much about their place in the sentence but only their meaning, he first chose the meaning that seemed to fit best and then came up with the syntax on which to string these pearls. We will do the same, using a trot prepared by Proteus Gowanus friend Ron Janssen.

A Celtic curse. A duel of poetries. Language as virus. Language as a tool for ingeniously tormenting. The unsettling impact of Algonkian place-names in settler descriptions. Words of children as a vector for lethal disease spread among their parents: 

These and other word-struggles will be read aloud, to amplify the “War of Words” segment of our Battle year. Please come and enjoy the language of Jane Collier, William S. Burroughs, Ben Marcus, Paul Metcalf and Kurban Said, not to mention that aggrieved anonymous cursing Celt. 

As part of the War of Words exhibition, Keith Sanborn will screen, present and contextualize the Situationist film Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973) by René Viénet.

Viénet was part of the Situationist International and the film is a classic example of the Situationist strategy of Détournement. In this work, Viénet brilliantly appropriates a martial arts film and subverts its original meaning by dubbing in his own text dealing with class conflict and alienation.

Sanborn is a media artist, theorist, curator and translator who translated this work “in order to add to historical understanding and to release what remains of its revolutionary analysis and praxis—in short, its orgone energy.”

Sanborn will present the film and conduct a discussion and analysis following the screening.

Join us for the first in our  Battle film series, curated by Joseph Martin. The topic is relevant: class warfare using words for weapons. The Servant (1963), starring Dirk Bogarde, was written for the screen by Harold Pinter. It is the first of three films written by Pinter and directed by Joseph Losey and is arguably the jewel of the Losey/Pinter collaboration, a slow-burn of a movie about the complex — and eventually toxic — relationship between manservant Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) and his upper-class employer Tony (James Fox). At first, Barrett appears to be pragmatic and competent, but Tony’s girlfriend Susan (Wendy Craig) is suspicious of his intentions and determined to test his mettle. When Barrett introduces his sister Vera (Sarah Miles) into Tony’s life as another servant, the foursome begins their steady descent into an all-out battle of agendas both hidden and exposed, wherein the weapons used are social order, sex, and — most of all — words; weapons that cut as deeply as the sharpest of knives. Adapted by Pinter from a novelette by Robin Maugham.

Cost: $10
Texts and paper will be provided; bring a pen.
Free wine for $2 a glass.

The War of Words contains at least one fruitful struggle: the clash of languages on the battlefield of the translator’s brain, as loaded vocabularies mass and charge. Yet no struggle is more pleasurable, since of all readers the translator enters into the most intimate relationship with the source text. But what if you know one language only? Or don’t know the language you want to translate? To this dilemma solutions will be offered by Writhing Society leaders Wendy Walker and Tom La Farge.

Homophonic Translation

There’s more to translate than just the sense of a text; there’s also the sound. Homophonic translation strips the sense out of the original text and keeps only the sounds, then finds English words that repeat those sounds as nearly as possible. Participants will be given text to translate from some little-known language, and we will see what sort of sense different people make from that sound-montage. [Those ambitious to translate both sound and sense will be given that opportunity.]

Fenollosa

Ezra Pound admired Chinese ideograms because they made words into images. But he didn’t know Chinese. To make his translations, he asked his friend Ernest Fenollosa, a professor at Harvard, to make a character-by-character translation of some classic Chinese poems, giving the possible meanings of each character. Since the ideograms themselves do not declare much about their place in the sentence but only their meaning, he first chose the meaning that seemed to fit best and then came up with the syntax on which to string these pearls. We will do the same, using a trot prepared by Proteus Gowanus friend Ron Janssen.

Note: This workshop will be limited to sixteen people. Please reserve your spot by writing to email hidden; JavaScript is required.

This year, from September through July, we investigate the theme,  Battle, starting with the exhibition, War of Words.

Battle and war metaphors “infiltrate” our lingua franca. They are used to explain all sorts of things from existential dilemmas (“inner conflict”) to health issues (“cells attack”), sports moves (“launch a blitz”) and politics (“the war on women”) to name just a few.

Is it possible that conflict is at our very core? Do we fashion our language to reflect and represent this conflict at every turn?

War of Words grew out of these questions and presents art, artifacts and books that explore ideas of conflict of all sorts as filtered through the not-so-precise lens of language.

Artists in the exhibition are Rosaire Appel, Stephanie Brody Lederman, Carrie Cooperider, Paula Gaetano-Adi, Steve Clay of Granary Books (presenting the collaborative works of bpNichol and Barbara Caruso), Ligorano/Reese, Anli Liu, Angelo Pastormerlo, William Powhida, Lance Rutledge, Reed Seifer, and Cody Trepte.

Also included are a myriad of artists and writers who have participated in the hive-mind project entitled “Yes or No.”

And, finally, a collection of artifacts and books will be on display to explore the topic further.

Please join us in creating a collaborative artwork as part of the War of Words exhibition opening September 15.

The Premise:
We are constantly drawing lines in the sand to delineate “us from them.” Zero or One. Black or White. Yes or No.

Yes or No  explores this ubiquitous binary conflict by bringing together elements from a multitude of makers. While each piece is autonomous, the sum total reflects the hive mind at work.

How to Play

1) First make the big decision. Choose either “Yes” or “No.” Really, only one of these two words…think carefully!
2) Create a small work 5″ x 7″ using your chosen word. Please make it horizontal. No frames.

2a) Your word (and not the other one) should be visible.

3) This may be high art, low art or not art at all.

4) It must be black and white only. No color.

5) It must install easily. (no electronics or fancy stuff). We will install these in a large grid in the gallery.