IN(DI)VISIBLE TRANSLATIONS
A workshop with Clara Lobregat Balaguer co-organized by the Institute of (im)Possible Subjects and at land’s edge
In a reality where reality itself does not exist, only verbal acrobatics that represent one view or another of what can be understood (though may not necessarily be true), words are the ultimate weapon. Translating realities into different languages, ones (registers) that may even exist within a single language, becomes a skill of absolute importance. The once invisible translator or interpreter is now fully recognizable by an audience or citizenship that either misunderstands, cannot comprehend or refuses to understand the events that unfold. As the Filipino academic Vicente L. Rafael writes, the translator’s power lies in her ability to shape realities, by “becoming someone other than who one is, taking on and taming the language of a foreign presence, reproducing it in one’s own native tongue, and thereby converting it into something other than what it is.”
In this workshop, participants will translate sections of a text sourced, gathered and rewritten by the artist. Into languages they speak, or languages they don’t speak, or languages that exist within their native tongue, or languages yet to be invented. A discussion on the weaponization of words. the death of facts/reality, and what can be done to survive in such a climate will also be directed or emerge.
March 11th at 6:30 pm hosted at here and now
5471 Huntington Dr N
Los Angeles, CA 90032
Lobregat Balaguer (Clara)
Clara Lobregat Balaguer (Manila,1980) is a social practice artist and independent researcher interested in the decolonization of Filipino cultural production most especially through the lens of the contemporary vernacular. She founded The Office of Culture and Design in 2010, a platform through which she articulates research, residencies and social practice projects, mostly for culturally underserved communities in the Philippines. She has released one book as author and nine as publisher at the helm of the imprint Hardworking Goodlooking, which she co-founded in 2013 with Filipino-American graphic designer, Kristian Henson (MFA Yale). She has lectured at Harvard GSD, MIT, Strelka Moscow, RISD, MoMA PS1, AIGA-Museum of Art and Design NY, Triple Canopy, Hanyang University (Seoul), Ateneo de Manila and University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has exhibited work at Asia Culture Center, Art Dubai, Singapore Art Museum, New York University (NYU), Hangar and La Capella.