Babelonian Paragon
“Translation”
Curator Henrik Skotte
A Part of Trondheim Literature Festival
Babel, May 3-13 2007

The linguistic confusion that started when God punished the humans for being arrogant
and for building the tower of Babel was a frustrating experience. All of a sudden people
found themselves speaking different languages and they could no longer understand each other. A new phenomenon came into existence, namely translation.

Translation is the theme of the Trondheim Literature Festival of the year and in that connection ten visual artists and ten authors are invited to make an exhibition in the Babel gallery. Here the two ancient sister arts are placed together in order to experiment with a possible translation between the two. Paragon is a literary genre intending to compare two art genres and would, preferably, include a ranking. The present exhibition can hardly be termed competitive – it is rather a friendly cooperation where artists using language as their means of expression meet visual artists. But is it still possible to find traces of the comparison that started in antiquity?

Ancient poets like Plinius, Cicero, Vergil and Ovid described as visually as possible contemporary paintings and sculptures. By simply reading their descriptions, they wanted the reader to be able to get a vivid idea of what the object in question looked like. Such texts were called ekphrasis. The works of art themselves were lost, but the texts describing them remained, bearing witness to the masterpieces of antiquity. During the renaissance, artists took an interest in the ekphrasis and used these as a point of departure for translations from literature into new works of art, reversing the process. At the same time, the artists wanted to compete with antiquity and the art of writing paragone flourished. Which epoch is the greatest, and, even more importantly, which kind of art is the superior one? The one that includes the temporal dimension or the one that possesses the dimension of space? Some would claim ut pictura poesis – as the picture is, so the poetry will be; others would say that the reverse was the case. For visual artists, it became important to visualize time or to demand that the viewer spend time studying the work. In order to enjoy the many hidden meanings, for instance, the viewer had to decode numerous references to literature.

Contemporary art is also preoccupied with time and has used various strategies to incorporate this fourth dimension. Installation art shares the early modernists’ interest in motion , thus endeavouring to the dimensions into one single space-time. We have to move through the work that makes use of space, and we therefore have to spend time. As observers, we can no longer contend ourselves with viewing the work from one angle. Annika Borg’s installation “Solid Liquid” (Version 2) is a good example of this. Using a text by Samuel Beckett as a point of departure, she has made several layers of texts on glass. (Maybe the work mirrors the process of translation, uncovering various layers in the original text?) To appreciate Borg’s work fully, one should move around as one takes in the effects of the layers of glass and the shadows. Ideally, one should even go outdoors to view the work from the opposite side. Similarly, to observe Anna Halberg’s work, we have to raise our eyes to the ceiling and then look at the floor. Sentences are mirrored in each other and meaning ensues. “Translation” needs sequences of time, as does poetry recital.

In a similar manner, video art makes demand on the observer’s time. A collection of humorous and charming videos by Marit Lindberg hits off translation to a T, showing us new ways of learning a language. In Japanese for Beginners, we see adults “dancing” the Japanese signs to make an amused audience understand what they try to write with their bodies. Signs are translated into movement.

It would be hard to leave history completely out of an exhibition with a theme as rich in tradition as this one. Dea Svensson agrees and shows the illustrations from a children’s book about the cat Dante and the girl Beatrice. Dante Alighieri’s “La Divina Commedia”, from the early 14th century, is the background for these poetical drawings. Book illustrations go a long way back – we know for instance that the ancient Egyptians decorated their manuscripts – and such illustrations constitute an important link between literature and the visual arts. At Dante’s time illustrating books was a prestigious task, as can be guessed from the Limbourg brothers’ book “Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry”. The much younger phenomenon Artist’s books is also represented at the exhibition. These artistically designed books are something completely different from illustrated books; they are themselves works of visual art. In these works the translation from the tradition of one art discipline to that of another has become total.

In the 18th century Lessing claimed that the various kinds of art were at their best when they were kept apart. The modernist art critic Clement Greenberg agreed that the arts were most successful when they focused on their own particular qualities. The philosopher Theodor Adorno opposed this view. He noted that the borderlines between the different kinds of art were becoming increasingly diffuse and he did not see any reason to try to counteract this trend. It is the tendency of our times, and “immunity against the tendency of the time as such deserves no merit.” Apparently, as one traces the discussion about the relationship between the arts, one will find a pattern of opposing opinions in this matter. The exhibition “Translation” has Adorno on its side. Here you will find a mixture of art and literature, uninhibited by strict borderlines or clear-cut definitions. Writers work in a visual manner, visual artists make use of the tools of literature. The work of Gunnar Wærness is a good example of this open-minded attitude. In the manuscript of his forthcoming book Værness demonstrates that he is both a writer and a visual artist, using collages and texts in a manner that makes his book a very visual literary work.

The exhibition may be described as a friendly and positive paragon, a fruitful meeting rather than a competition. We see that two independent and strong kinds of art merge and bring forth exciting hybrids. Putting them together in this manner sheds new light on the relationship between them, making us see them not as competing rivals, but rather as complementary kinds of art that cooperate to give the audience a rich artistic experience.

Solveig Lønmo
Translated by Birgit Kvamme Lundheim

For practical reasons it was impossible to mention all the writers and artists taking part in the exhibition. I (Solveig Lønmo) saw only a few of the works before the deadline for this text. Those not mentioned in the main text are Monica Aasprong, Leif Holmstrand, Ylva Westerlund, Kajsa Dahlberg and Kari Mjåtveit.
In addition, the exhibition included artist’s books by, among others, Helena Kive, Märit Aronsson, Markus Lannto and Linda Rønning.