Notes on Translation, Creativity, and Cultural Identity

Translation and Creativity

Translation involves loss and gain; something is always lost, but something new is also introduced.
Translation isn't simply carrying something perfectly from one language to another; it's acknowledging what cannot be carried across.
An artwork can be a form of translation, inventing a new form that tells a story across boundaries.
Innovation arises in the creative act of translation.
The artist works with other people's writing, interested in what others have to say rather than telling their own stories.

The artist used plastic letters and oil crayons, aiming for sharp boundaries but finding the oil crayons messy and unable to keep their shape.
Initially, the goal was neat letters, but the smudging and abstraction became more interesting.
The paintings became about transforming letters into abstraction.

The artist no longer prioritizes making everything from start to finish.
It's more interesting to work on something already started by someone else.
Line breaks and spacing made by others can be different and interesting.
Mistakes, suggestions, or interventions from others often push the work forward.
Losing control and letting others contribute can lead to unexpected results.

The message isn't separate from the object or how it's made; the work starts with making.

The artist is installing a curved wall in three parts, which will be painted and installed.
Parameters include sound, editing, and animation, all designed for the film.
The space, number of screens, and scale are also considered.
The final touch is the video being displayed on the surfaces built for it.
The artist edits the film using space instead of time, deciding what to show where.
Showing something in different places affects how the film is experienced.
Sculptures started happening with the films in mind and are always paired with a film.

The artist brings characteristics from animation, like humor, into the sculptures.
There is a master version of the video, like a film.
Sculptures come from a digital world that the artist imagines and are then fabricated.
The video and sculptures come from opposite places and meet in the middle.

The artist filmed teenagers in Rabat, Morocco, focusing on the French-speaking culture.
The subject of "Michelin Teens" is the French-speaking culture in Morocco.
French education is a tool for maintaining French power.
The film explores why French is political and a soft power tool, not just whether it's a working language.
The artist was French-educated and had to emancipate themselves from that to talk about it.
The artist also filmed houses in neighborhoods where people who go to French school live, showing the lifestyle they aspire to through architecture.
"Michelin Teens" was first shown at the Whitney Biennial inside sculptures on the terrace.
The viewing stations make viewers coexist by "stealing" the view from the other side when a button is pressed.

The artist doesn't consciously choose themes like postcolonialism but follows what they are spontaneously drawn to.

The Caps is an island in the Atlantic where American troopers have placed intercepted people from Africa.
The island has become its own place.
The Caps is a physical analogy for the idea of diaspora.

The artist feels limited in expressing themselves with words due to being an English second language speaker.
They feel like they're using a bit of their first language.
Being in between languages, the artist developed a practice that mixes TV, cinema, sculpture, and installation to "hit the right note."

The artist is interested in video and the weaving room, which they see as the first computer.
Encoding of information in video, weaving, and written language is in lines.
Patterns in weaving are built line by line and have a numerical basis.
Information on a page is decoded line by line.
Video uses a video gun that sprays electrons in lines on the screen.
The artist is interested in how lines can be built up to create information and how narratives can be put together based on weaving structures.
Storing information and creating information seems inherent in human development.
Pattern on the womb was a way of transmitting stories early on.
There is a link between old and new ways of storing and transmitting information.

Wanting the language to inform and giving it context can limit its ability to stretch.