The Contemporary Journal

The Contemporary Journal is the digital strand of the Public Programmes and Research department at Nottingham Contemporary, which is responsible for the journal content.

2018

On Translations

'On Translations' is the first issue of The Contemporary Journal (February 2018 - March 2019). This issue explores the cultural and political contradictions that arise in processes of translation - in language and beyond. These questions derive from an understanding that translation encompasses processes of erasure in colonial language and epistemologies. At the same time, it offers a liminal space marked by mistranslation, confusion, and hesitance. 'On Translations' aims to explore the potential capacities of translation to be a 'site of inhabitation' rather than a transitional space between the original and the translated text.

‘What We Know Is Built on Erasure’

Rolando Vázquez

Mexican sociologist Rolando Vázquez discusses processes of erasure – in colonial language and epistemologies, as well as in contemporary transnational and globalised communication. This interview took place in the context of the ‘On Translations’ international conference at Nottingham Contemporary in 2018.

Territory: Universe (Translexical Opacity)

Wong Bing Hao

In Territory: Universe (Translexical Opacity), Wong articulates the arcane lexical opacity of writing on trans and gender non-conforming experiences through the work of Jamie Crewe, Sophia Al-Maria and Victoria Sin, and Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho.

Transliterative Tease

Slavs and Tatars

Bio

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

Bio captures a span of 365 days in which the artist updated the 160-character ‘bio’ section of a profile on Twitter each day. An experiment in erasure, self-deletion, and visibility in the expansive sphere of the internet, Bio anchors itself to the wider lineage of artists’ cancelled texts, but in the age of new media as ‘soft’ power.

Bridges, Hearts, Cash: Neoliberal Markets of Cultural Understanding

Dima Hamadeh

‘Cultural diplomacy’ has played an instrumental role in fostering a particular mode of self-identification among Arab artists and practitioners. The philanthropic support for Arab art promotes the perspective of a cultural ‘elsewhere’ and a personified ‘otherness’. The result is a ‘love’ that configures the ethos of the art market.

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