The internationally famous Croatian video artist Dalibor Martinis introduces to Croatian audience his performance “Simultaneous Speech” in Museum of Contemporary Art ( Zagreb, Gorgona theatre) on January 13, at 19 o’clock. With Dalibor Martinis there are 12 translators: Wang Qiaolan, Lea Kovacs, Iva Stojevic, Wissam Sleman, Jana Busic, Kozuko Kono Hut, Ana Petrovic, Marijeta Karlovic, Irena Sertic, Ignacio Esponera, Danijela Vukorepa, Zeljka Salopek, and Marija Popovic.
Dalibor Martinis enters the stage and starts his speech…12 translators simultaneously translate him to 12 languages. But what if they don’t translate his words but those of Fidel Castro in Hungarian, of Mao Zedong in French, of Osama bin Laden in Spanish, of Martin Luther King in Russian, of Gandhi in German, of Lenin in Turkish, of Joseph Beuys in Hindi, of Guy Debord in Greek, of Kasimir Malevich in Japanese, of Marcel Duchamp in Chinese, of Andy Warhol in Arabic, and of Marinetti in Swahili? Actually, it is the artist who translates the “translators” since his speech is composed of all the above speeches, a mixture of key texts of twentieth century, a speech of all speeches. A speech opera. And a lesson in matter of language and ideology. About our all understandings and all our misunderstandings. Does Dalibor Martinis with this stage performance give an ironical comment to the Babylonian language confusion in times of the EU enlargement? Is he comparing us to our mythical ancestors, who failed so magnificently with the building of the Babel tower? Is it possible to generate out of these texts of greatest artists and political leaders some general synthesis of the forever finished twentieth century, or the data recovery may be achieved only through unrelated fragments.
After the performance the book “Simultaneous Speech” will be presented by Nada Beros MSU, Boris Greiner and Dalibor Martinis.
MV
Source:
Media-Via 