International Centre for Fine Art Research

On the 11 and 12 December 2008 ICFAR hosted the first of three seminars and workshops entitled TRANSLATED ACTS: THE CONDITION OF TRANSLATION: WORKING ACROSS ART, WRITING AND PERFORMANCE. The series is convened by Claire MacDonald of ICFAR, Carol Watt of the Poetics Centre at Birkbeck, and Caroline Bergvall, AHRC Creative Fellow in English at Southampton University. It brings together artists, writers and researchers to investigate some of the tools, methods and ideas of contemporary visual arts and writing practices as they engage with operations of translation, transmission, exchange and collaboration across languages and art practices.

The purpose of the series is to investigate some of the tools, methods and ideas of contemporary visual arts, writing practices and language research as they engage with operations of translation, transmission, exchange and collaboration. The format includes an evening of public presentation and discussions, followed on the next day by a one-day seminar led by the conveners, including presentations by visiting artists and research students. The intention of Translated Acts is to build a network of artists, writers and researchers and draw them towards a larger international project.

The first seminar at UAL focused on identifying a range of practices and methods at work in the traffic across forms and languages, with presentations that bring together poetics, spoken word practice and research and work that operates across the visual, textual and performative.

More information on Translated Acts and the outcomes of discussion can be found HERE.