Transmission review: Juan Cruz the Translator in Person (02nd Dec 2009)



By Brook Davis

Juan Cruz is a Spanish living in England who decided to exploit their knowledge of culture and language, to become a translator, translating into English some interesting names of Spanish literature.

This presentation showed another interesting facet of Juan Cruz. From a conventional translator, became a translator in direct, making a piece of theatrical art, a live translation of Don Quixote. For the piece presented it was possible to attend the difficulty of such representation.

However, perhaps tired of translating books, he decided to produce a different kind of work and began to experiment different things.

Two books clamped together to a table, “Simplified Dictionary” and “Artists Artifacts”, theory and practice joined together or how to simplify the execution of art. However according to the author was an accidental artwork.

A video work about a normal day of his life, works at home, the musical education of their children, playing with them…

Anyway it was interesting, deserves a “worth it” for originality.

Want to read more? Writings from my Head

‘Afterwardsness’.

Posted by ‘Anon’

Mad as a box of frogs. A focus on content or spelling mistakes? Contacted the University to double-check? Or noticed the play on words. How could it possibly say that in the programme? Just to see how many turned up? “Tomorrow is cancelled, it’s a waste of time. Ross Noble? I wish it had said that in the programme too. Now that would have been interesting. Because I don’t really think I can. I can’t really say anything further about those works… The reason for  ‘translations’, I have no other skills. One of his children as the cameraman. The artist rendering an old wall. A video. Well, if you can’t remember pal… I wish it had said that in the programme. That would have been interesting. Third ‘translation’, can’t remember. Probably Kant or something. I don’t know why I’ve included that slide really. Only I laughed. Friend concerned for my sanity. Covered in ten dust sheets to keep the horse out. What is outside of frame, what is inside? Engage with in same way as a painting. Framed the window first. The difference between one work and another. Another ‘translation’.

The spaces in-between the words.

Arduousness. The pauses in-between the words. without stopping. For six hours a day. Reads chapter 42. Orange? From behind a window of coloured glass. The ‘translation’ through a microphone. This time from within a room! But! Again.

Translation of Don Quixote. 2005. Credit due for that. Not the behaviour of a shy person. A half hour performance. A square in London. The next piece is a performance of a ‘translation’. Again Don Quixote, a two-week job. Cruz talks about the next piece, another ‘translation’. Yes? Normative language has to figure somehow. The abstract of a theme. Not necessarily to mean a translation of words/ languages? I always tend to revert back to that ‘first translation’ and stay with that. I use language as others might use images. 

Praxis? He explains that as a part of his practice.

The slides begin; a car boot sale. “I chose four items, no reason – so I just put them together”. Interested members of the public. Local artists. Students of all ages and abilities. An easy way in. He could baffle us with philosophical mystification. should that be his want. So this is nice, good of him. What a fantastic name for an artist. ‘Juan Cruz’. Premaddona. And get away with it. It would be easy for him, I am sure, to flounce onto the stage. He’s a big name in contemporary art, writing and philosophy. Meek as being very different to shyness, which I don’t sense at all. I admire the sense of meekness that he puts across at the beginning. I get the sense that I would like him very much as a person, in a one to one conversation. He comes across as an affable, extremely likeable man.

“Difficult”. “It is unnerving, having to explain the absurdity of ones explorations”. [I feel?] “Guilty, have/ have not done things”. Juan Cruz follows this up – makes an ambiguous opening observation. Superego. That is not a question. Wouldn’t they? Make time. Naturally. True friends would do that anyway. But then manners don’t cost anything.

Freud. Superego. It would be rude not to. Host. Intro, key words, timing, flow. Weeks before? Or email? They must discuss the format beforehand, meet them at the station, a meal, or at least a coffee at the Cafe Ritazza. Guest artist, writer and philosopher Juan Cruz. Nervous laughter from the crowd. ‘Superego’. “Touching you”. “That would be wierd”. “As I would want to do”. “I cannot sit on the stage”. “A friendship that he may not want”. Dr Sharon Kiveland introduces her good friend and fellow artist.

Anon.

Juan Cruz, Transmission.

Sharon Kivland presents Juan Cruz

A voice experience, an inner experience. The voice as a medium of text.

To translate is obviously a complex mechanism. How to place his own voice in the voice of an author. What difficulties and what pleasure does one feel in learning.

Translating. Learning in creative purpose. Juan Cruz explores this theme in a kind of filmed mise en scene. He staged his body, carried by his voice and translates a text in an empty room.

One can wonder about this  kind of exhibitionism. Visitors are startled, they ignore the translation in live. Sometimes his voice is white, he cannot go forward, he stops. He combines his voice with the voice of the author by mixing his own words, deliberately betrayed. It is a re-creation but also, inevitably, a betrayal.

These are short texts, a chapter or two. Chosen at random as he says. There is a kind of humility in the reception of a text of others, but also a kind of assertiveness.

Staging is taking a risk. Don Quixotte is not a protagonist, he becomes a partner whom he reappropriates the voice, the text, the spirit. The creative intensity is Juan’s because He can play its full. The original is forgotten for a while.

Other images unfold in a sort of halo inconsistent. A sound of violin, an image of his daughter, a voice behind the image. Juan learning how to build a wall. Both translating, building a wall or learning to play violin are an investment, an exploration.

I remain fixed on the investment of the voice and its own in the language of another. It is a challenge. Juan Cruz no doubt takes pleasure in this praxis.

A text carried by the voice of a character becomes another text. It changes. He who speaks becomes the owner, to enforce. Expose himself as he does and translate in live is a risk. He betrays on behalf of creation.

Images: Don Quixotte by Picasso and Dali

Transmission 2nd December Sharon Kivland presents Juan Cruz

(a) Brotherhood (of man). Internalized friend, the inner voice. The super ego is the punative voice, even when it commands you to enjoy, (even when it commands you to let go and write a stream of consciousness style). The real-the unconscious.

Returning to works over familiar…the muse. Guilt about what you have or haven’t done. Guilt about returning to the muse. Guilt about a show that goes up to easily, we fuss over the one that isn’t working not because we nned it to work as much as we need to fuss. He tells us he might be anecdotal, yes do I like to empathise with you. I decide to play a bit of word bingo…Rubric 2

Two books clamped together, theory and practice, Ii wonder if he thinks the two get forced together sometimes..one illustratyting the other? An accidental artwork, and yet…? Suspicious 2

Its not a work or a photograph its just something. (Oh I bet the tutors cringe when they hear this…) Work that uses language isn’t necessarily clever-er. (some of it is quite stupid…but never dumb)

Translating don Quixote by word of mouth. Like going back to the muse this is his skill, his mainstay. Something to fall back on, clearly his grandma didn’t advise him to do a typing course. Stumbling across someone doing something in a space. Interrupting the space. Listening, slightly broken pauses..gaps for thought…you can hear him thinking.His accent changes a re quite dramatic. Cruz is saT IN A SPOT LIGHT ON THE SHOWROOM STAGE, WITHIN KIND OF AURA, LIKE A HALO. HE CASTS EXCELLENT SHADOWS. A photo of a book. Rarefied.

Covered in blankets to keep the sound out. N. Kant is stupid…ha ha! The video, the stuff that moved him was what he used, (not reasonable criteria?) (I wonder how well the visitors consider the effect their words have on the audience…they have a lot of influence)..he is a teacher…

Protagonism in the work, images of men. Work for the multitude, not the ‘public’…B and I both turn to look at F at this…funny.His iunformal chatty style is honest and self examining. Enlightenment, shepards, heroic, the good shephard, the good man JC. The flock, authority has been eroded. Open interpretation vs authoritive interpretation…alarming news from TM.  Could S get JC in for artwriting…? The small text texts are not boring, funny, A bit silly.  He has the book and the folder just behind him, he reaches over so casually to get them so he can illustrate a point, its as if his office is right there on the stage. I like that. Not to finish…

Diabolical goats. (D with his whiter than white skin and straighter than straight hair was once mistaken for being the devil. The black preacher said he looked like a goat). The miners in Taussig. The absurdity of a supersticious society.

He hasn’t talked much about the actual translation. That act. What it is. Is the verbal performance a kind of priestly transubstantiaion? Liturgical yes, but trasubstantiation is a bit extreme. What happens when you translate from one language to another? Forms of language. Its feeling a bit long now, his soporific voice…I drift. Restlessness, noises all around. Phone are ringing, I spot S checking if it was hers..if it rang would I rush over and answer it? Coughing…Then he just decides to stop.

listening to French……

My impression is……

Here is an artist/writer/storyteller whose philosophy is really that of not having a practice, this strikes one as being quite important to him. His work very often involves translating texts from Spanish to English. For example he did an exhibition called translating Don Quixote which was an oral translation of Don Quixote from Spanish into English.

He sat on his rear at a table in the Cervantes Institute in Manchester Square with Don Quixote in Spanish before him for a few weeks. For three of four hours a day he constantly spoke and  translated this explicitly into English. He chose to speak even if there were people not present.

He arranged that visitors could also view him through a small  coloured glass viewing panel from outside the small room he occupied. This defined and sharply contrasted his ‘performance’ within a small room. Without being able to enter, it was as though one was being a peeping-tom. His work and approach is so simple, it was essential to see and is first-class.

Key words noted,  in order of use to help the construction. But may be this is actually deconstruction?

frappe =                      cold or strike, force, dumbfound.

de derriere                        rear

pre                                     before

explicite                        explicit

quelque chose                        choosing

pas presence                        not present, no presence

tranche                                    clear-cut, defined, sharply contrasted

voyeur                                    peeping – tom

premier/                       first, prime importance, abs essential, at first sight, first-class