If you have ever wondered to what degree the content of what you have just expressed has been understood by the people you have expressed it to, this project is for you.
What is the overlap between what we say, write, visualize, sing and what our communication partners make of it? Are we all equally good or bad translators, or are some of us better at it than others? We normally only find out how well we have translated, when we get entangled in misunderstandings that are big enough to need sorting. The poet Kate Wakeling and I set out to research the subject in late 2018. Kate picked photos from my photo series ‘Road Show’ – I didn’t know which ones – to ‘translate’ them into poems. She then passed the poems back to me, to translate into new photos. On 26th February 2019 we invited the public to come and look at the photos and poems, and try to match those that belonged together. Kate then did a reading of the poems, followed by our joint attempt to match the translations to the starting points whilst the audience was still gathered. The project continued with a second round in which we were joined by the choreographer Fiona Millward and the composer Catherine Carter to create the next translation chain. The project is currently on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.