Ricarda Vidal and Madeleine Campbell

Experiential Translation and Art-Making: projecting Anna Blume into presence

In this keynote we will present our recent exploration of arts-informed, and transformational praxes of translation and retranslation in our collaborative endeavour to create a “Gesamttranslation” (a total work of translation) of Kurt Schwitters’ seminal poem “An Anna Blume” (1919, 1921, etc). We will discuss our own multimodal translations of the poem and those of others as concrete examples of translating with/through art. Placing this work within the context of Anne Carson’s experimental translation of Antigone and Caroline Bergvall’s Via, we will focus on the affinity of the practice of translation with the practice of performance.

Here, we will also look at parallels and synergies between translation and art practice in a wider sense, exploring common interests such as representation, appropriation, originality and the role of play and creativity.

Bios:

Ricarda Vidal is senior lecturer in cultural studies at King’s College London as well as a translator, curator and text-maker. With Madeleine Campbell as Co-I, she is Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded international network Experiential Translation: Meaning-Making, Engagement and Agency across Media in a Multimodal World. She is also a member of the recognised research group TRADIC  (traducción, ideología y cultura), University of Salamanca. Recent publications include Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media and Home on the Move: Two poems go on a journey. 

Ricarda is the founder of Translation Games (2013-2018), a playful investigation of intersemiotic and multilingual translation that resulted in the creation of artworks, exhibitions and public events. Together with Manuela Perteghella she led the Arts-Council-funded multilingual and multimodal poetry translation project ‘Talking Transformations: Home on the Move’ and with artist Sam Treadaway she runs the book-work collaboration Revolve:R. Revolve:R book-works present the artworks created in the course of an 18-month long material conversation between artists using visual, audiovisual and sound-based media. 

Madeleine Campbell is a Canadian translator and Teaching Fellow in Language Education at Edinburgh University. In 2016 she founded the Special Interest Group on Intersemiotic Translation as part of cle.everywhere to investigate key questions regarding the nature of this practice and its role in fostering cultural literacy and language education. Her workshop Wozu Image, co-led with artist Laura González, interacted with Minsk-based Sergey Shabohin’s photo exhibition Wozu Poesie, originally commissioned by Haus für Poesie, Berlin, which she curated in Warsaw in May 2017 (see Open Cultural Studies 2018). Her installation Haجar and the Anجel, at The Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, developed with Sonic Artist Bethan Parkes and Visual Artist Birthe Jørgensen, explored the sensory and multimodal nature of Algerian author Mohammed Dib’s poetry. Her found poetry has appeared in Jacket 2, and recent translations of bilingual French/Occitan poet Aurélia Lassaque in Poetry International (Rotterdam), Poems from the Edge of Extinction, Asymptote, The Arkansas International and Europe in Poems. Her book Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders (2019), co-edited with Ricarda Vidal, challenges traditional notions of literary translation through the embodied perspective of practitioners working in a range of media. She is a member of the Traducción, Ideología y Cultura (TRADIC) Research Group, Universidad de Salamanca. 

In 2020 she co-led the initiative to secure the AHRC contract for The Experiential Translation Network (ETN) in collaboration with Ricarda Vidal, of Kings College London. As Co-Investigator of this Network, in 21/22 she co-organized, with Ricarda Vidal, virtual international Symposia for the ETN network members from HEIs in the UK, Europe and Hong Kong, and the ETN Network’s final in-person Conference and Exhibition at Kings College London (2022).