The Untranslatable three-day group is a collaborative and multidisciplinary project proposed by Bruno Baltzer, Leonora Bisagno, Cindy Coutant and Akim Pasquet together with other invited guests to explore the concept of untranslatable. Starting from a double image of translation-nomination, the group wishes to practice, through plural and heterogeneous approaches, the epistemic limits that are declared between a dominant translation, designating and circumscribing the world within parameters of legibility and that of the untranslatable as an act of resistance and transformation of the world, betraying the tyrant paradigm in a politics of differences and in an ecology of differences. The Untranslatable three-day group aims to be an open exercise spreading through different interventions, experimenting languages that are ultimately devoid of signifiers, acting vis-à-vis political invisibilisation, opening up to an emancipatory dimension as a necessary utopia for creating living communities.

PROGRAMME

TH 26.05
09:00
WORKSHOP – Intraducibile [The Untranslatable] – closed workshops day

FR 27.05
09:00
WORKSHOP – Intraducibile [The Untranslatable] – closed workshop morning

14:00
MANIFESTIAMO and Passaparola from Villa Romana to Piazza Tasso.
MANIFESTIAMO and Passaparola are two lively actions, which take place outside the Villa Romana at the encounter of people in the neighbourhood. Starting from the beautiful title given to the MANIFESTIAMO – on resistance, creation and reciprocity – three – month conference, the actions aim to open the institution spaces, to let circulate the words, to translate, reinvent, experiment languages in the public space.

17:30
LECTURES – Against translation and other lectures
Against Translation is a text by American poet Kenneth Goldsmith (born 1961) published in eight volumes–English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Arabic. The author discusses the impasses and shortcomings of translation and the virtues of an unapologetic linguistic – displacement.

SA 28.05
09:00
WORKSHOP – Vulnerable text (on inscription – register till 27.05: office@vilaromana.org)
workshop and (a) fanzine production investigating the idea of vulnerability as the affect of a text.

14:00
WORKSHOP – A word-collective story workshop (on inscription – register till 27.05: office@vilaromana.org)
A workshop exploring and sharing the experience of transmission on identities, relationships, love, conflict. Single words and stories mix to share a collective experience of intimacy.

16:00
BOOK PRESENTATION – Ulésilar – MAC Lyon
Feedback on the Ulésilar experience – collective residence at Mac Lyon 2021

16:30
BOOK/PLATFORM PRESENTATION/WORKSHOP Ecologies of studies – Book of secrets
Studying doesn’t take place only in the educational institutions where the society tends to frame, acknowledge and reward it. Secrets students are everywhere, black study is hidden in plain sight. Such scattered and situated creations of knowledge cannot be translated in the linear and universal diagram of the intellectual progress. We heard about ancient compilations of recipes that, as early as medieval times, were written down, tweaked and passed on in notebooks from one person to another: the book of secrets. It could be a good vehicle to move around and encounter stories about alternative situations of studying, but also to carry these stories elsewhere and disseminate them. We will present, discuss and maybe activate together this editorial object, a work in progress that started within the online exhibition After progress.

21:30
CINE’- CLUB – Le plein pays (Antoine Boutet) + Floral Cocktail
Somewhere in the French countryside lives a man who leads an unusual life. He is called Jean-Marie Massou, he could be called in many other ways: artist, hermit, man of the woods, mad, Sisyphus, a Beckett character, mystic. Antoine Boutet doesn’t judge him, he just follows him with his camera while Jean Marie is stubbornly digging up enormous stones, recording prophetic messages on old tapes and singing in a weird language. Presentation, screening, discussion, maybe a surprise.

SU 29.05
09:00
WORKSHOP – Intraducibile [The Untranslatable] – closed workshop morning

14:00
PUBLIC LECTURE – Open public lectures, encounters, actions, gestures, performances, listening – 4 hours long.
Among them: The interpreter, an online – live exchange with Paca Rimbau Hernàndez, Lithotherapy sensibilisation, an experiment to feel different energetic qualities of minerals, close to a guided meditation, in small groups, Letture ad arte, a multilinguistic playful participative lecture on art – with the support of Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, écoutes, listening to some untranslatables and other surprises!

18:00
PUBLIC PRESENTATION – Untraslatable [The Untranslatable] + Floral Cocktail
Presentation of the four-day Untranslatable workshop, talk, discussion

Leonora Bisagno and Bruno Baltzer have been working as an artist duo since 2014. Visual artists, their practice is oriented towards site-specific actions. They live in Luxembourg and in Italy.
Akim Pasquet is interested in questions of affect and energy, their circulation in intimacies and in ensembles. He is sometimes a curator, sometimes an artist, sometimes a teacher. He directs the art space Limbes & the Biennale Carbone.
Cindy Coutant is a visual artist, editor and researcher. She co-founded the art & research duo l4bouche in 2020 with Estelle Benazet. She teaches at la HEAD – Genève.
Helen Ibry is a social anthropologist and a language teacher. She is a researcher, a trainer and an activist working in various contexts. She focuses on gender, sexuality, migration, and identity. She lives in Milano.
Anne-Sarah Huet is a poet and visual artist, as well as a teacher and researcher in economics. She is completing a practice based PhD in fine art at ESAA-Annecy, where she mainly writes about money (coins, token), art and identity.
Jacopo Rasmi, teacher and researcher at the Université Jean Monnet (Saint Etienne). He lives in France, but comes back as often as possible to his home country Italy.
Paca Rimbau Hernández is a translator and an interpreter. Spanish by origin, she lives in Luxembourg.

PARTNERS:
Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg
Les Limbes, espace d’art et de recherche. With the support of : DRAC Rhône Alpes, Auvergne Rhône Alpes region and the city of Saint Étienne
jusquici a.s.b.l. – Luxembourg