Slavs and Tatars "Lektor": The Tranny Tease

Most knowledge starts with a question. Most art refuses an answer. The series of talks titled Questions & Answers claims the space in between, activating it for conversations on the peculiar knowledge an exhibition aspires, and destabilizes.

In relation to Slavs and Tatars’ project «Lektor»,the artist group proposes: “Through the lens of phonetic, semantic, and theological slippage, our lecture-performance explores the potential for transliteration - the conversion of scripts - as a strategy equally of resistance and research in notions of identity politics, colonialism, and liturgical reform. If translation is a form of linguistic hospitality, then transliteration is language in drag.”

In the context of the new version of the audio piece «Lektor», that Slavs and Tatars developed in advance of their fall exhibition for the future public library space of Kunsthalle Zurich, this proposal seeks to further mobilize questions of power implicit in language and listening, translation and transformation, recitation and reconciliation.

Slavs and Tatars’ lecture-performance will be followed by a series of questions and answers with Stefan Nowotny. Nowotny is currently a tutor at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has published widely on philosophical and political topics, co-edited several anthologies, translated a number of texts from both French and English into German, and co-authored Übersetzung: Das Versprechen eines Begriffs (2008). He is also part of the eipcp research project Europe as a Translational Space. The Politics of Heterolinguality.