Over the summer, nine translators gathered at Art Metropole to experiment with the elastic practices and theories of trancelation (a word that acknowledges language’s hypnotic properties and the trancelator’s own suspended agency in the between-space of translation). Most had never worked in creative translation before—a weird and endless task—but they worked from Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, German, English, incorporating swaths of architecture, visual art, philosophy, condensation, and commentary into their projects. In this book you’ll find the cornucopia of their labour: a mythological romp through a translingual rose garden; a rehearsal for revolt composed out of Finnegans Wake; a creaturely (dis)union of Kafka and Walter Benjamin; homophonic delirium visions of Lautreamont; a series of Anglo-Italian invitations to live other lives; fiery Guatemalan poetry in honour of the disappeared; Korean poetics of lack and yearning; elemental birds of prey hovering above the solitary wasteland; remixes in the zone of friendship.
Maggie Flynn is an artist and writer. Her practice feels like: listening to all the sounds of a word × hard pragmatism × deep pleasure.
Hamish Ballantyne is from Vancouver Island.
Nicholas Hauck is an exquisite corpse, the shadow of laughter, a puppet enlivened by ballet mechanique. His PhD examines the writings of Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin, Henri Michaux and Gherasim Luca.
Francesco Gagliardi is an artist based in Toronto. The ongoing Exercises series can be found at http://xercises.tumblr.com.
Ella Wilhelm is a pulsating ascetic living in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance; in other words, pretty common. She is pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and learning to coexist with house centipedes.
Marcin Kedzior After devouring Joyce for 10 years, practicing architecture, dance and music, Marcin Kedzior is approaching literature as the most compelling incarnation of urban design.
HELEN CHO: 조강옥; 趙江玉; Kang Ok Cho; Helen Kang Ok Cho; Helen Cho; Yeongwol; Jeongseon; Deoku-Ri; Buksil-Ri; Daejeon; Wainfleet; Welland, Toronto; Seoul; London; Berlin.
Francisco-Fernando Granados is a Toronto-based artist. His multidisciplinary critical practice spans performance, installation, cultural theory, digital media, public art, and curatorial and community-based projects. His writing has been published in exhibition catalogues, magazines, art journals, online platforms, and books including FUSE, KAPSULA, Canadian Theatre Review, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art.
Fan Wu is a rampaging enthusiast and occasional melancholic whose book of free translations of Tang Dynasty poetry, Hoarfrost & Solace, came out in July 2016. He runs a series of close workshops which combine interpersonal intimacy with close readings and writing workshops.
Perfect-bound, softcover, b&w.