<p>This is the playground of the republished text <b>Practical Vision</b>, by <ahref="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada</a>:
you can find the republished text <ahref="printing/index.html">here</a>.</p>
<p>What you see in the background is my response to the text, a reflection about the meaning of Complexity related to the language.</p>
<p>If you are also interested to print, <ahref="export/practical_vision.pdf">here</a> you can download the printable file. If you also like this page, there is the possibility to print it as a poster, <ahref="export/practical_complexity.pdf">here</a>!</p>
<pid="eccezione">(scroll up!)<br><br>This is an example of how <aid="start"href="#mov"class="pink">Practical Vision</a> work, <aid="cane"href="#canino">inhabitating</a> this hyperobject.</a></p>
</div>
<button><ahref="../">HOME</a></button>
<p><aid="12"href="#13"class="green">They</a> attempt to protect past and
<aid="8"href="#7"class="pink">future</a> cultures and they work through
<ahref="#5"id="6"class="pink">organic and inorganic networks</a>.
<p>This Telegram BOT makes a crowd-sourced dictionary with your translations. You can add every word/sentence you want from english to be translated into any language! Search for it and follow the instructions to add new translations:
<p>Original Contribution by <spanhref="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada.</span>
<br>
A special thanks to <span>El-Hadji Barsa Rachid Sagna</span> and <span>Munyao Kilolo.</span>
<br>
Original Artistic Response by <spanhref="http://printthefuture.nl/">Print The Future.</span>
<br>
Republished and complexified by <spanhref="http://federicoponi.it">Federico Poni.</span>
<br>
Made with <span>love</span> and <spanhref="http://p5js.org">P5.js</span></p>
<p>A <aid="16"href="#14">hyperobject</a> is <aid="29"href="#17"class="pink">something</a>
that creates, continuously, small
or big events somewhere.
Not here, not there - it is more a
<aid="10"href="#9"class="pink">shadow</a>.</p>
<pclass="green">A hyperobject is <ahref="#3"id="4"class="pink">multi</a>-dimensional.
That means <aid="9"href="#10">we cannot see</a>
the effects of its events clearly.</p>
</div>
<divclass="right">
<p>Surprise! This is a <ahref="../DRAW"target="_blank">bonus</a> for you.</p>
<p><atarget="_blank"href="details/index.html">Here</a> a focus of Practical Vision <ahref="#cane"id="canino"class="pink">living</a> in the <atarget="_blank"href="complex/index.html">hyperobject</a>.
<p>A few weeks back someone told me that it is an exceptional achievement for a short story to be translated into a dozen languages. I had never really thought about it, as I am not drawn from a long tradition of scholarship in literary translations. I could not quantify his statement in any way. For me those words came across as a big compliment given the scope of the work done by the Jalada Collective in the past year in the <spanid="tradu-pre">area of translations</span> and the use of digital facilities.</p>
<p><aclass="link" href="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada is a pan-African collective</a>of young African writers from all over the African continent, of which I am member as well as the managing editor. It began in 2013 during a workshop convened by renowned editor,<aclass="link" href="https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellah_Wakatama_Allfrey">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.</a>We had a lively conversation among the participants about what we as young African creatives drawn from different geographical locations could do with the resources
we valued: language<ahref="../ATATA/index_text.html"class="glyph"id="language"><span>A</span></a>, knowledge<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="knowledge"><span>L</span></a> and our <spanid="focus-one">web</span> of connections. So Jalada was born. From wherever we were, we worked together online<ahref="../../HOPE/index.html"class="glyph"id="online"><span>H</span></a> in what seemed like a virtual office. All you needed to do was post a message, and another member would take action. The Internet became an enabler of collaboration<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="collaboration"><span>L</span></a> and a resource in the production process of a digital Jalada magazine. <a class="link"href="https://jaladaafrica.org/publications/">Our first thematic issue</a>tackled the often-underexplored subject of mental health within the African context. Our second anthology focused on stories of fictionalized sexual experiences in ways that broke the implied modesty of our fictional boundaries. We also did an anthology on Afrofutures, a publication that allowed us, as Africans, to capture multiple<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="multiplicity"><span>L</span></a> and alternative ways of imagining futures.</p>
<p><aclass="link"target="_blank"href="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada is a pan-African collective</a>of young African writers from all over the African continent, of which I am member as well as the managing editor. It began in 2013 during a workshop convened by renowned editor,<aclass="link"target="_blank"href="https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellah_Wakatama_Allfrey">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.</a>We had a lively conversation among the participants about what we as young African creatives drawn from different geographical locations could do with the resources
we valued: language<ahref="../ATATA/index_text.html"class="glyph"id="language"><span>A</span></a>, knowledge<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="knowledge"><span>L</span></a> and our <spanid="focus-one">web</span> of connections. So Jalada was born. From wherever we were, we worked together online<ahref="../../HOPE/index.html"class="glyph"id="online"><span>H</span></a> in what seemed like a virtual office. All you needed to do was post a message, and another member would take action. The Internet became an enabler of collaboration<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="collaboration"><span>L</span></a> and a resource in the production process of a digital Jalada magazine. <atarget="_blank"class="link"href="https://jaladaafrica.org/publications/">Our first thematic issue</a>tackled the often-underexplored subject of mental health within the African context. Our second anthology focused on stories of fictionalized sexual experiences in ways that broke the implied modesty of our fictional boundaries. We also did an anthology on Afrofutures, a publication that allowed us, as Africans, to capture multiple<ahref="../../LIQUID/draft.html"class="glyph"id="multiplicity"><span>L</span></a> and alternative ways of imagining futures.</p>
<p2class="subtitle">The Translation Issue</p2>
<p>Then, we embarked on a translation project in which we aimed to have one short story translated into as many languages as possible. <aclass="link" href="https://jaladaafrica.org/2020/10/28/translation-project/">Since March 2016,</a>when we first published the story <i>Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ</i>,<aclass="foot"href="#footnoteone-r"id="footnoteone">[1]</a>the story has been translated into sixty-eight languages.
<p>Then, we embarked on a translation project in which we aimed to have one short story translated into as many languages as possible. <aclass="link"target="_blank"href="https://jaladaafrica.org/2020/10/28/translation-project/">Since March 2016,</a>when we first published the story <i>Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ</i>,<aclass="foot"href="#footnoteone-r"id="footnoteone">[1]</a>the story has been translated into sixty-eight languages.
The initiative has been critically lauded by several scholars as one of the most essential projects in fostering communication amongst readers and speakers of different languages across the globe.
@ -76,7 +88,7 @@
<spanid="focus-learnafricans">What if</span> that beautiful desire to learn and appreciate a foreign language was also inherently directed towards other African Languages? In failing to have enough systems that can facilitate this kind of interest and indulgence, the online publishing of stories in different languages,
<spanid="website-salta">multilingual performances</span>, and podcasts are a small but possibly vital contribution. Not just for readers that want to read other languages, but those who have grown up with very little exposure to written texts in their own mother tongue.</p>
<spanid="website-salta"><atarget="_blank"href="http:salta.su/djisafoul"target="_blank">multilingual performances</a></span>, and podcasts are a small but possibly vital contribution. Not just for readers that want to read other languages, but those who have grown up with very little exposure to written texts in their own mother tongue.</p>
<p><spanid="focus-term">Ngũgi wa Thiong’o </span>has used the term “practical vision” to describe the fresh opportunities for disseminating African literature that the digital age makes possible.
@ -95,7 +107,7 @@
As practical visionaries, interested more in <spanid="focus-turningideas">turning ideas into actions</span>, we work with full acknowledgement of what has come before. We take into consideration the conversations that have been held on the subject, and bring these further by pursuing our translation work in ways that examine barriers of the past and find ways to overcome them now.</p>
<p>Just as we have created and continue to create a database of literary<ahref="../../--/index.html"class="glyph"id="literary"><span>M</span></a> translators, we want to establish a base of devoted readers. Earlier in the process, someone was quick to ask me, rather sceptically, what happens after we have published the translations and who will even be interested in reading them? Once the first Translation Issue was published, the translators and our most devoted readers started sharing the work on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs while expressing their excitement at seeing such a publication. People tweeted links and shared specific languages on their timelines. A twitter user in Ethiopia, @LindaYohannes, tweeted<br><a href="https://twitter.com/LindaYohannes/status/713060642836578304"id="tweetQuote">“Reading Ngugi in #Amharic! This feels so right!”</a><br>Digital technologies helped us tap into greater and faster possibilities whereas the mere exhaustion of putting together the volume in print form would have been enough excuse for us to store the print copies in the warehouse for a month or two before venturing into marketing and distribution. The reality of such exhausting stretch of time in the production process was for a long while the reason why people kept stuck in conversation and never got into doing.</p>
<p>Just as we have created and continue to create a database of literary<ahref="../../--/index.html"class="glyph"id="literary"><span>M</span></a> translators, we want to establish a base of devoted readers. Earlier in the process, someone was quick to ask me, rather sceptically, what happens after we have published the translations and who will even be interested in reading them? Once the first Translation Issue was published, the translators and our most devoted readers started sharing the work on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs while expressing their excitement at seeing such a publication. People tweeted links and shared specific languages on their timelines. A twitter user in Ethiopia, @LindaYohannes, tweeted<br><atarget="_blank"href="https://twitter.com/LindaYohannes/status/713060642836578304"id="tweetQuote">“Reading Ngugi in #Amharic! This feels so right!”</a><br>Digital technologies helped us tap into greater and faster possibilities whereas the mere exhaustion of putting together the volume in print form would have been enough excuse for us to store the print copies in the warehouse for a month or two before venturing into marketing and distribution. The reality of such exhausting stretch of time in the production process was for a long while the reason why people kept stuck in conversation and never got into doing.</p>
<p2class="subtitle">Creating digital networks for translation</p2>
@ -132,15 +144,15 @@
<divclass="credit">
<h3>
Original Contribution by <spanhref="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada.</span>
Original Contribution by <a target="_blank"href="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada.</a>
<br>
A special thanks to <span>El-Hadji Barsa Rachid Sagna</span> and <span>Munyao Kilolo.</span>
<br>
Original Artistic Response by <spanhref="http://printthefuture.nl/">Print The Future.</span>
Original Artistic Response by <a target="_blank"href="http://printthefuture.nl/">Print The Future.</a>
<br>
Republished and complexified by <spanhref="http://federicoponi.it">Federico Poni.</span>
Republished and complexified by <a target="_blank"href="http://federicoponi.it">Federico Poni.</a>
<br>
Made with <span>love</span> and <spanhref="http://p5js.org">P5.js</span>
Made with <span>love</span> and <a target="_blank"href="http://p5js.org">P5.js</a>
<pid="focus-europ-one-r"style="margin-top:40px"><spanid="focus-europ-two-r">Many Nairobians learn French and German even if it is not necessary, this comes from their colonial heritage.<br>Sure, in itself it is a beautiful thing, since all knowledge is power, but this attitude often means people almost neglect their own <spanclass="language">mothertongue</span>.</span></p>
<pid="focus-learnafricans-r">What if that beautiful desire to learn and appreciate a foreign <spanclass="language">language</span> was also inherently directed towards other African <spanclass="language">Languages</span>?</p>
@ -188,9 +200,9 @@
<pid="feed-net-one-r"><spanid="feed-net-two-r"><spanid="feed-net-three-r">Practical Vision lives also in the digital realm. They protect past and future cultures, thanks to organic and inorganic networks.</span></span></p>
<pid="focus-turningideas-r">Practical Vision fights against the attempt of a single <spanclass="language">language</span> culture → Practical Vision fights against this global standardisation → Practical Vision thinks about another balanced globality.</p>
<pid="focus-turningideas-r">Practical Vision fights against the attempt of a single <spanclass="language">language</span> culture → Practical Vision fights against this global standardisation → Practical Vision thinks about another balanced globality.</p>
<pstyle="text-align: center; margin-top: 10px; margin-left: 90px"><imgsrc="../assets/infograph.png"id="focus-infograph-r"><br>Imagining better worlds is a multi-cultural discipline.</p>
<p><imgsrc="../assets/infograph.png"id="focus-infograph-r"><br>Imagining better worlds is a multi-cultural discipline.</p>
<pid="main-statement-r">THERE ARE MORE THAN SIX THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED <spanclass="language">LANGUAGES</span> ACROSS THE WORLD</p>
@ -216,7 +228,7 @@
<pclass="tito">A practical Telegram BOT</p>
<pclass="link">@practical_vision_bot</p>
<p>This Telegram BOT makes a crowd-sourced dictionary with your translations. You can add every word/sentence you want from english to be translated into any language! Search for it and follow the instructions to add new translations:<br><br>
<p>This Telegram BOT makes a crowd-sourced dictionary with your translations. You can add every word/sentence you want from english to be translated into any language! Search for it and follow the instructions to add new translations:<br><br>
<p>A few weeks back someone told me that it is an exceptional achievement for a short story to be translated into a dozen languages. I had never really thought about it, as I am not drawn from a long tradition of scholarship in literary translations. I could not quantify his statement in any way. For me those words came across as a big compliment given the scope of the work done by the Jalada Collective in the past year in the area of translations and the use of digital facilities.</p>
<p><a href="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada is a pan-African collective</a>of young African writers from all over the African continent, of which I am member as well as the managing editor. It began in 2013 during a workshop convened by renowned editor,<a href="https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellah_Wakatama_Allfrey">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.</a>WehadalivelyconversationamongtheparticipantsaboutwhatweasyoungAfricancreativesdrawnfromdifferentgeographicallocationscoulddowiththeresources
<spanid="focus-one">wevalued</span>: language, knowledge and our web of connections. So Jalada was born. From wherever we were, we worked together online in what seemed like a virtual office. All you needed to do was post a message, and another member would take action. The Internet became an enabler of collaboration and a resource in the production process of a digital Jalada magazine. <a href="https://jaladaafrica.org/publications/">Our first thematic issue</a>tackledtheoften-underexploredsubjectofmentalhealthwithintheAfricancontext.Oursecondanthologyfocusedonstoriesoffictionalizedsexualexperiencesinwaysthatbroketheimpliedmodestyofourfictionalboundaries.WealsodidananthologyonAfrofutures,apublicationthatallowedus,asAfricans,tocapturemultipleandalternativewaysofimaginingfutures.</p>
// var ciccio =`
// <p>A few weeks back someone told me that it is an exceptional achievement for a short story to be translated into a dozen languages. I had never really thought about it, as I am not drawn from a long tradition of scholarship in literary translations. I could not quantify his statement in any way. For me those words came across as a big compliment given the scope of the work done by the Jalada Collective in the past year in the area of translations and the use of digital facilities.</p>
// <p><a href="http://jaladaafrica.org">Jalada is a pan-African collective</a>of young African writers from all over the African continent, of which I am member as well as the managing editor. It began in 2013 during a workshop convened by renowned editor,<a href="https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellah_Wakatama_Allfrey">Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.</a>We had a lively conversation among the participants about what we as young African creatives drawn from different geographical locations could do with the resources
// <span id="focus-one" >we valued</span>: language, knowledge and our web of connections. So Jalada was born. From wherever we were, we worked together online in what seemed like a virtual office. All you needed to do was post a message, and another member would take action. The Internet became an enabler of collaboration and a resource in the production process of a digital Jalada magazine. <a href="https://jaladaafrica.org/publications/">Our first thematic issue</a>tackled the often-underexplored subject of mental health within the African context. Our second anthology focused on stories of fictionalized sexual experiences in ways that broke the implied modesty of our fictional boundaries. We also did an anthology on Afrofutures, a publication that allowed us, as Africans, to capture multiple and alternative ways of imagining futures.</p>
<p2class="subtitle">TheTranslationIssue</p2>
<p>Then,weembarkedonatranslationprojectinwhichweaimedtohaveoneshortstorytranslatedintoasmanylanguagesaspossible.<ahref="https://jaladaafrica.org/2020/10/28/translation-project/">Since March 2016,</a>when we first published the story <i>Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ</i>,<a class="foot" href="#footnoteone-r[1] </a>thestoryhasbeentranslatedintosixty-eightlanguages.
// <p>Then, we embarked on a translation project in which we aimed to have one short story translated into as many languages as possible. <a href="https://jaladaafrica.org/2020/10/28/translation-project/">Since March 2016,</a>when we first published the story <i>Ituĩka Rĩa Mũrũngarũ: Kana Kĩrĩa Gĩtũmaga Andũ Mathiĩ Marũngiĩ</i>,<a class="foot" href="#footnoteone-r[1] </a>the story has been translated into sixty-eight languages.
The initiative has been critically lauded by several scholars as one of the most essential projects in fostering communication amongst readers and speakers of different languages across the globe.
// The initiative has been critically lauded by several scholars as one of the most essential projects in fostering communication amongst readers and speakers of different languages across the globe.
// Under the umbrella of the powerful magic of storytelling, online publishing has enabled different languages and cultures to find expression and converse with each other. The Jalada website, where the story and its translations are published, acts as a kind of portal to a multiplicity of languages wherein you can find codified languages you may never have heard about. Because for us at Jalada we are keen on multiple narrative modes of textual and visual storytelling, the story continues to be available in podcasts and live multilingual dramatizations.</p>
// <p>We conceptualised the Jalada translations issue with a specific focus on African Languages. Each language remains a representation of a specific culture on the continent. Taken together, our continent is infinitely rich in its cultural resources.
// <span id="feed-africa-one" >Over 2000 languages exist across the 54 nations. </span> Imagine the monumental impact of a story in all these languages. It would be an immovable symbol. In history and in scholarship it would stand as a testament to the fact that
// <span id="feed-langeq" >all languages are equal:</span> It does not matter the origins, the color, or the number of people who use any specific language, nor the standardisation of such a language or the lack thereof.</span>
// The coming together of all those languages would smash any doubt that in our diversity immense beauty can be created with a great and lasting impact.</p>
// <p>Jalada Translations issue was born from the firm faith that one day, whether it is during my lifetime or in the generations to come, one such short story will exist in all African languages.
// <span id="feed-counterhegemonic" >I want to imagine </span>that over the years the spill over effect of this will transform our attitudes towards the use of our mother tongues and the languages that we learn from our neighbours through our daily interactions. I want to imagine the impact it might have on the access that our children have to texts written in all manner of languages, especially the marginalised languages. We continually learn to reap from the resources that we have. One such irrefutable resource is the language of our mother tongues.</p>
// <p>Some of the distinctive African languages represented in the translations issue have suffered many years of non-representation in the written form. There are worrisome statistics of the number of books or articles that have been published in these languages. Yet, across many countries and regions within the continent, thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of people use these languages every day.
// They transact businesses, they pray, they love, and dream of love and life in these languages. And yet, so little is written in them. What is even more worrying is the fewer number of people who get access to these written resources. Most of the written material is in European languages – English, French, and Portuguese – as well as a few dominant African national languages.</p>
// <p>The illusion of unifying a nation through a single language is wide spread. This has meant a very deliberate marginalisation of African languages and the almost brutal emphasis on the spread and dominance of English or other European languages. Additionally,
// <span id="feed-senegal" >we feed on that illusion</span> instilled in us by our education systems, which were designed by European colonialists to serve the empire and then continued as desirable norms by post-colonial governments. But there is a daily struggle from many quarters and initiatives to effect change in our school systems.</p>
// <p>Today, one does not need to go to a well-equipped library to see texts in other languages. You only need to log into social media, and you will see the flow of conversations in all manner of languages, albeit a little inconstant. We do not have to look at that with suspicion. We do not have to feel hate and resentment for the existence of the other or feel burdened by the colonial idea that this is divisive. Over the years,
// <span id="focus-europ-one" >I have noted</span>how many young Nairobians flood institutions to learn French and German. marvel at the possibility of acquiring what is not necessarily ours.
// <span id="focus-europ-two" > in itself</span> is a beautiful thing; all knowledge is power. However, most of the individuals learning these languages will never go to France or Germany. They will use that resource they have attained amongst themselves in a very small circle, or for employment purpose such as to serve the occasional tourist or to work at one of the multinationals. Even worse, sometimes it is never put to use. It exists merely as a placeholder in a Curriculum vita or for prestige, such as when someone mentions that they have studied this or that European Language. In their minds they remain psychologically arrested in the desire and continually gravitate towards the European home of the new learned language. However, they will interact very occasionally with speakers of other African Languages.
// <span id="focus-learnafricans" >What if</span> that beautiful desire to learn and appreciate a foreign language was also inherently directed towards other African Languages? In failing to have enough systems that can facilitate this kind of interest and indulgence, the online publishing of stories in different languages,
// <span id="website-salta" >multilingual performances</span>, and podcasts are a small but possibly vital contribution. Not just for readers that want to read other languages, but those who have grown up with very little exposure to written texts in their own mother tongue.</p>
// <p><span id="focus-term" >Ngũgi wa Thiong’o </span>has used the term “practical vision” to describe the fresh opportunities for disseminating African literature that the digital age makes possible.
// <span id="feed-net-one" >Practical vision </span>is about activating dreams in the present; it is about translating a vision that seems at far distance into a doing that brings you there.
// <span id="feed-scheme-wrp" >What we envision,</span> is building a future of multilingual pride and connections that know no boundaries between writers, publishers, and readers. And because of our access to and connectivity with the Internet, we are able to move beyond mere conversations towards the execution of ideas. This however requires grit and a lot of help from all corners. If we had done the Translation Issue in the pre-internet age, it would have taken us decades and huge financial means to put it together. The web of translators grew because of my colleagues and interested participants who encouraged others to contribute to the bringing together of sixty-eight languages into one volume. The volume bears the hallmark of conversations between cultures, languages, and people of the world. Thanks to the generosity invested by the writers and translators we were able to do this work efficiently in less than a year.</span> Our ways of consuming information have changed radically since oral literature was shared around a bonfire in early evenings. As publisher we therefore try to understand the changing nature of communication and the resultant structures.
// <span id="feed-net-two" >We want</span> to find ways to take full advantage of digital facilities as it is the reality of our generation and of those to come.</p>
// <p>We continue to experiment with many more ways to tap into these digital facilities to share stories in all manner of African Languages. The current question is how we can have a continued publication of translations that allow a conversation between the languages of Africa and those of the world.
// <span id="feed-net-three" >Can we create</span> a digital publication that captures the infinite resources in our languages and cultures? In order to meet this challenge, we decided to select one short story a year – short enough to allow a relatively ease of work in terms of translation – that was powerful enough to speak across multiple cultures.
// <p>Our vision is to have each story translated into as many African Languages as possible. And one day, in the not so distant future, we will have an online archive of stories and translations in all manner of languages. Pursuit of such a vision is not easy. There is a great deal of misconception about African Languages and their places in our personal and communal intellectual discourse. In our contribution to improving the publication of, as well as encouraging readership of works in African languages we needed to lay a firm foundation. First, we recognise that there are voices that have come before us who have already done a great deal to fight for language rights. Our selection of a story by Ngũgi wa Thiong’o was a recognition towards those who had taken responsibility for our languages.
// <span id="focus-turningideas" >As practical visionaries</span>, interested more in turning ideas into actions, we work with full acknowledgement of what has come before. We take into consideration the conversations that have been held on the subject, and bring these further by pursuing our translation work in ways that examine barriers of the past and find ways to overcome them now.</p>
<p>Just as we have created and continue to create a database of literary translators, we want to establish a base of devoted readers. Earlier in the process, someone was quick to ask me, rather sceptically, what happens after we have published the translations and who will even be interested in reading them? Once the first Translation Issue was published, the translators and our most devoted readers started sharing the work on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs while expressing their excitement at seeing such a publication. People tweeted links and shared specific languages on their timelines. A twitter user in Ethiopia, @LindaYohannes, tweeted<br><a href="https://twitter.com/LindaYohannes/status/713060642836578304">“Reading Ngugi in #Amharic! This feels so right!”</a><br>Digitaltechnologieshelpedustapintogreaterandfasterpossibilitieswhereasthemereexhaustionofputtingtogetherthevolumeinprintformwouldhavebeenenoughexcuseforustostoretheprintcopiesinthewarehouseforamonthortwobeforeventuringintomarketinganddistribution.Therealityofsuchexhaustingstretchoftimeintheproductionprocesswasforalongwhilethereasonwhypeoplekeptstuckinconversationandnevergotintodoing.</p>
// <p>Just as we have created and continue to create a database of literary translators, we want to establish a base of devoted readers. Earlier in the process, someone was quick to ask me, rather sceptically, what happens after we have published the translations and who will even be interested in reading them? Once the first Translation Issue was published, the translators and our most devoted readers started sharing the work on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs while expressing their excitement at seeing such a publication. People tweeted links and shared specific languages on their timelines. A twitter user in Ethiopia, @LindaYohannes, tweeted<br><a href="https://twitter.com/LindaYohannes/status/713060642836578304">“Reading Ngugi in #Amharic! This feels so right!”</a><br>Digital technologies helped us tap into greater and faster possibilities whereas the mere exhaustion of putting together the volume in print form would have been enough excuse for us to store the print copies in the warehouse for a month or two before venturing into marketing and distribution. The reality of such exhausting stretch of time in the production process was for a long while the reason why people kept stuck in conversation and never got into doing.</p>
<p2 class="subtitle">Creating digital networks for translation</p2>
// <p2 class="subtitle">Creating digital networks for translation</p2>
// <p><span id="feed-coll-net-one" >The connection that is formed between the writer and publisher</span> is quite important, but the connection formed with reader is also crucial. We know by now that there are people across the continent and in the diaspora who believe in the importance of marginalised languages. Perhaps in their love for the translated stories and the process of translation, they too will be inspired to write and translate. In practise, this
// <span id="feed-coll-net-two" >collective effort </span>will call for a continuous and growing engagement with multi-linguistic storytelling practices. Vigorous social media campaigns and the sharing of the work in all possible media will enhance such reciprocal relations. Also the collaboration with universities and other learning institutions, can create interest or integrate the idea of African languages in research and teaching practises.
// <span id="focus-multilang" >We find it especially important that children grow up with multi-lingual content and digital facilities will make access possible at a minimal cost.</span> We believe that a generation of young people with a passion for their languages, whatever these languages may be, will be here to hold this vision together for a very long time. To grow that generation we must continue to encourage those among us with the intellectual facilities and various experiences to participate in projects such as the Jalada translations issue. New translators will get the space to experiment with their abilities.
// <span id="feed-coll-net-three" >And those who</span> have already made attempts in prior translation issues will have the opportunity to continue in a supportive environment that allows their talents to grow.</p>
// <p>An important step in executing such a practical approach in the area of translations is to keep a good connection between different players: the writers who are interested in different languages, the translators who value the great power in the stories, and the various publishers who have demonstrated their willingness to disseminate these works further and further. This would not be possible without the connections and collaborative processes we have put in place.
// <span id="feed-coll-net-four" >At the heart of our practical vision</span> lies a growing network of connections, without which ideas would remain mere ideas. Adapting the structure of digital media – as a web of connections – onto our way of working allows for the perseverance and sharing of our valued resources: languages and the knowledge they carry.</p>
// <p2 class="subtitle" id="the-future-is-multi-lingual" >The Future is Multi-lingual</p2>
// <p>However, despite the crucial importance of digital platforms we have seen that the work can grow into more than digitally published pieces once they have reached a widespread audience. From its digital space, Ngũgi wa Thiong’o‘s story has been adapted for the stage on several occasions. Each dramatization celebrated the power of
// <span id="focus-infograph" >cultural diversity in imagining better worlds.</span> Secondly, the story has also gone into print. In Sweden, as a children book; for the occasion of the Mboka Festival of Arts Culture and Sport in three Gambian Languages (Wolof, Mandika, and Fula); and publishers across Spain will print editions in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Bable, and Occitan. From digital to stage, to print and then back into the digital realm: In India, a print publication of a translation in Kannada, a Dravidian language, was later republished in an Indian online magazine that reached a few million readers. In the USA, the story was nominated for a project that aims to make short digital eBooks available on the subway for a year.
// <span id="main-statement" >There are more than six thousand nine hundred more languages across the world, and so the story travels.</span> In the future, we hope to see the translators that we work with move on to bigger challenges. For them to take up translation of fictional and non-fiction books. While shorter works can be read much more easily online, actual books may require print publication, and in this sense,
// <p>Over the course of ten years we envision having ongoing translations of about ten different stories. With each story translated into a hundred or more languages, we will have made it a
// normal practise to write and translate into and between African Languages. With this practice comes the idea of conversation between the languages as they appear alongside each other. The beauty is in the use of any known language anywhere in the world with confidence and the faith in the good of what is your own, and respecting the faith and confidence of the other in using and celebrating what is theirs.</p>
// <p><span id="focus-end" >And this is the future</span>: a place for practical visionaries. A time of multilingual pride and connections that know no boundaries between writers, publishers, and readers. When we act out our ideas, the future will smash the difficulty of access through digital technologies; the exclusion of languages through translations; and the limitations of opportunities through the growth of collective work. We will wake up one day soon and feel the light of possibility shine upon our faces. And because the ‘Upright Revolution’ of digital innovation is inevitable, the publisher, the writer, the translator and the reader –
// <span id="feed-bot" > wants the works to survive and remain relevant</span> – must find ways of taking advantage of the digital technologies at their disposal.</p>
@ -159,7 +160,7 @@ The word undecidable appears in Six Memos for the Next Millennium written by Ita
Calvino’s fourth memo,<spanid =foot>¹</span>Visibility, revolves around the capacity of literature to generate images and to create a kind of “mental cinema” where fantasies can flow continuously. Calvino focuses on the imagination as “the repertory of what is potential; what is hypothetical; what does not exist and has never existed; and perhaps will never exist but might have existed.”<spanid =foot>²</span> The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination: the risk to definitely lose, in the overproduction of images, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.”<spanid =foot>³</span><br><br>
1. Out of five, the sixth lecture was never written, as the author died suddenly and the series remained unfinished, and yet published with its original, and now misleading, title.<br>
2. Italo Calvino, Visibility, in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1988, p. 91<br>
3. ibid, p. 92..<br></span><br><br>
@ -170,7 +171,7 @@ In the last pages of the lecture, he proposes a shift from understanding the fan
For Calvino, artistic operations involve, by the means of the infinity of linguistic possibilities, the infinity of the artist’s imagination, and the infinity of contingencies. Therefore, “[the] attempts to escape the vortex of multiplicity are useless.”<spanid =foot>⁶</span> In his fifth memo, he subsequently focuses on <i>multiplicity</i> as a way for literature to comprehend the complex nature of the world that for the author is a whole of wholes, where the acts of watching and knowing also intervene in the observed reality and alter it. Calvino is particularly fascinated by literary works that are built upon a combinatory logic or that are readable as different narratives. The lecture revolves around some novels that contain multiple worlds and make space for the readers’ imaginations. The common source to all these experiments seems to rely in the understanding of the contemporary novel “as an encyclopedia, as a method of knowledge, and, above all, as a network of connections between the events, the people, and the things of the world.”⁷
@ -180,7 +181,7 @@ For Calvino, artistic operations involve, by the means of the infinity of lingui
Therefore, let’s think visibility and multiplicity together, as: a multiplication of visibilities. They are traits specific to artistic production and define a context for the undecidable, or rather for undecidability, as the quality of being undecidable. Calvino seems to suggest that literature<spanid =foot>⁸</span> can be particularly productive of futures, if it makes itself visible and multiple. Which is to say, if it doesn’t give up on involving radically different realities into its operation modes and doesn’t fade out from the scene of the ‘real’ world. We might stretch this line of thought a bit further and propose that art’s potentiality is that of multiplying the visible as an actual counterstrategy to the proliferation of images that surrounds us. A strategy that is capable of producing different conditions of visibility. Embracing what we are capable to see but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces, collective subjectivities, and social gatherings. Embracing what we are capable to see
but also think and imagine, to fantasise and conceptualise; and bringing into existence different configurations of public spaces, collective subjectivities, and social gatherings.<br><br>
8. Or ‘art’ which is the term I will use below for the rest of this essay.</span><br><br>
@ -198,7 +199,7 @@ A good example of an undecidable artwork is Markus Öhrn’s Azdora, a long-term
Similar to other artistic projects that one could trace back to the practice of undecidability, <i>Azdora</i> mingles different realities and fantastic worlds and also activates a participatory dynamic, yet preserving “the grey <i>artistic</i> work of participatory art.”<spanid =foot>⁹</span> In other words, it creates and protects a space of indeterminacy. In fact, <i>Azdora</i> is at the same time a performative picture, an artistic fantasy, a community theatre work, an emancipatory process, an ongoing workshop, a social ritual, and a concert. Furthermore, from the project a documentary movie and a sociological survey have been produced,<spanid =foot>¹⁰</span> multiplying the possibility to access the work from different angles and via different formats. If the coexistence of different media already implies different angles, durations, discourses, and forms of spectatorship, the performance itself keeps an undecidable bound between its real and fictional ontologies. The performative work of <i>Azdora</i> is then intrinsically ‘political’ according to Rancière definition of ‘metapolitics:’ a destabilising action that produces a conflict vis à vis what is thinkable and speakable. Azdora allows different interpretations and produces conflicting discourses, yet remaining untouched. This does not necessarily mean complete though as, on the contrary, it is generating a multiplicity of different gazes that are all legitimate and complete but yet do not exhaust the work. This is what makes the performance itself unfulfilled and thus incomplete and open.
9. Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso, London-New York 2012, p. 33.<br>
10. Respectively by the independent filmmaker Sarah Barberis and by the researcher Laura Gemini at the Urbino University.</span><br><br>
@ -208,7 +209,7 @@ An undecidable artwork is, in other words, a site where different and even contr
What is peculiar to this kind of artworks then, and what within them can produce an understanding of the place of art and of its politics today, is that they generate a multiplicity of gazes and of forms of spectatorship that also coexist one next to the other without mediating between their own positions and points of view. The multiplicity of gazes produced and gathered by undecidable artworks does not compose itself into a community, as there is no ‘common’ present. Rather, it generates a radical collectivity based on multiplicity and on conflicting positions that are not called to any form of negotiation, but just to a cohabitation of the space of the work. Spectators and their views and imaginations are acknowledged as equal parts of a collective body that exist next to each other. They don’t fuse in one common thought and don’t see or reflect one common image, yet effect each other by their sheer presence and existence, operating as a prism that multiplies the reality it reflects. A space of communication is opened here that is not meant for unilateral or bilateral exchanges, but rather for a circulation of information and interpretations – both of fictions and projections. A circulation over which no one – not even the artist – exercises a full control. The place of the author is then challenged and responsibility is shared with the audience not as a participant,<spanid =foot>¹¹</span> but rather as an unknowable and undecidable collective body that receives, reverberates, and twists it.
<br><br>
<spanid =footnotestyle ="font-family: 'Avenir'; font-size: 12px; color: black; line-height: -0.5; text-align: left; color: white; background-color:black; display: inline-block; padding: 10px; margin-left: -2%;">11. An active group of spectators invited to exercise over the artwork </span>
<spanid =footnote>11. An active group of spectators invited to exercise over the artwork </span>
<br><br>
Multiple forms of public spaces and collective subjectivities thus arise and start inhabiting a productive time that goes much beyond the artwork itself and is still loaded by the specific geography of infinities that it has produced. The kind of collective body that undecidability produces could of course be seen as an image of a possible or future societal structure, but it is rather an enigmatic subject: it is not there to actualize itself but to keep being a sheer, glimmering potentiality. Indeed, as a practice of undecidability, art produces a collectivity, a future time, and an elsewhere, but does not claim any agency over them. It rather operates in a regime of prefiguration,¹² which is to say it does not tend towards a pre-existing, visible image. On the contrary, it proceeds in the darkness in order to produce different forms of visibility within it.
@ -216,7 +217,7 @@ Undecidability could then be detached from art and applied to curation, institut
Ultimately, a political dimension does spring from an art that practices its undecidability and from its encounter with a multiplicity of gazes. Preserving it is possible also by curating the relation between the artworks and their spectators and by setting the conditions for an intensity that can last in time and reverberate much wider and much longer than in the actual shared space and time of the performance. Through the combination of the encounter between undecidable art, multiplicity of gazes, and a curatorial dimension a condition of existence is produced that is intrinsically and utterly political as it is, with Samuel Beckett’s words in The Unnamable, about being “all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling”.
<br><br>
<spanid =footnotestyle ="font-family: 'Avenir'; font-size: 12px; color: black; line-height: -0.5; text-align: left; color: white; background-color:black; display: inline-block; padding: 10px; margin-left: -2%;"> 12. See Valeria Graziano, Prefigurative Practices: Raw Materials for a Political Positioning of Art, Leaving the Avant-garde, in Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre (ed.), Turn, Turtle! Reenacting the Institute, Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2016, pp. 158-172.</span><br><br>
<spanid =footnote> 12. See Valeria Graziano, Prefigurative Practices: Raw Materials for a Political Positioning of Art, Leaving the Avant-garde, in Elke van Campenhout and Lilia Mestre (ed.), Turn, Turtle! Reenacting the Institute, Alexander Verlag, Berlin 2016, pp. 158-172.</span><br><br>
<divid =voicestyle ="background-color: black; color: white; font-family:'Avenir'; font-size: 14pt; position:absolute; display: inline-block; margin-left: 25%; top: 5px; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid; box-shadow: 5px 5px blue;"><b>Imagine that you are an artist now.</b></div><br><br>
<divid =voice><b>Imagine that you are an artist now.</b></div><br><br>
<b>MULTIPLYING THE VISIBLE</b> <spanstyle ="font-size: 10pt;">(From p.3, 4 in the original essay)</span><br>
The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contemporary culture and imagination : the risk to definitely lose, <ahref="../HOPE/#media2"><divclass =sy>H</div> in the overproduction of images</a>, the power of bringing visions into focus with our eyes shut and in fact of “thinking in terms of images.<br>
@ -643,14 +669,14 @@ The main concern that he brings forth lies within the relation between contempor
<b>ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL WORLDS</b> <spanstyle ="font-size: 10pt;">(From p.4, 5)</span><br>
<b>ACTUAL AND POTENTIAL WORLDS</b> <spanstyle ="font-size: 10pt;">(From p.4)</span><br>
In fact, undecidability is a specific force at work that consciously articulates, redefines, or alters the complex system of links, bounds, and resonances between different <divclass =sy>M</div> <ahref="../--/">potential and actual worlds.</a> In this sense, undecidability is a quality specific to some artworks within which the three worlds that Calvino describes meet and yet remain untouched, autonomous, and recognizable.<br> An artwork can indeed create a magnetic field where different actual worlds coexist and, by living next to each other yet not sharing a common horizon, generate a potential world. Then ‘potential’ does not mean ‘possible.’ In fact, if something is possible when it contains and under certain terms performs the possibility of its actualisation, a world is potential when it can maintain its <p>potentiality</p> and never actualize itself into one actual form.
In particular, the potentiality generated by undecidable artworks is grounded in a logic of addition and contradiction that is specific of art. A logic of ‘and… and… and…’ as opposite to the logic of ‘either… or…’ that seems to rule reality.<br><br><br>
<br>Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out. They can be sites of existence and of experience where images let go of their representational nature and just exist as such. None of the images of an artwork are being more or less real than the others, no matter whether they come as pieces of reality or as products of individual or collective fantasies. It is the art(work) as such that creates a ground where all the images that come into visibility share the same gradient of reality, no matter whether they harmoniously coexist or are radically conflicting.<br>
<br><spanstyle ="font-size: 10pt;">(From p.4)</span><br>Artworks are places where contradictory realities can coexist without withdrawing or cancelling each other out. They can be sites of existence and of experience where images let go of their representational nature and just exist as such. None of the images of an artwork are being more or less real than the others, no matter whether they come as pieces of reality or as products of individual or collective fantasies. It is the art(work) as such that creates a ground where all the images that come into visibility share the same gradient of reality, no matter whether they harmoniously coexist or are radically conflicting.<br>
If every work builds up complete systems that are offered to its visitors or spectators to enter into – if the invitation of art is often that of losing the contact with known worlds in order to slip into others – something radically different happens within an art that practices its undecidability. <br>
Here, spectators are invited to enter the work’s fictional world carrying with themselves the so-called real world and all their other fictional worlds; a space is created where all these worlds are equally welcomed. The artwork may then be navigated either by only choosing one layer of reality, or by continuously stepping from one world to another– different dimensions are made available without any form of hierarchy or predicted relations. Such dynamics seems to occur in <p>performative</p> works in particular, as the contemporaneity of production, consumption, and experience that is typical of performance intensifies the possibility of undecidable links between different realities.<br><br><br><br>
@ -722,7 +748,7 @@ var chap1 = document.getElementById("emoji");
chap1.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
chap1.innerHTML = "When are your 'thinking <b>and</b> imagining <b>and</b> fantasisng <b>and</b> conceptualising' born?<br> Have you ever seen physical births of these activities? They are not tangible <b>and</b> not visible. Don't you normally have them during your daily rituals? For instance,<br><br>when you have a 🚿 to refresh yourself.<br><b>And</b> when you drink a cup of ☕.<br><b>And</b> when you get some 🔆. <br><b>And</b> when you water your 🌱. <br><b>And</b> when you smoke 🚬 <br><b>And</b> when you 📞 your freinds.<br> You may think you're not in working mode, yet in fact, unconsciously get into labours...";
@ -730,7 +756,7 @@ var chap2 = document.getElementById("emoji2");
chap2.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
chap2.innerHTML = "You've got some pictures in your head.<br>They aren't emobodied in reality yet, but you seem excited somehow.<br> Because potentiality of the pictures are infinite.<br> They are fluid <b>and</b> ungrabbable.<br> As if they are like :<br>☁️ <b>and</b> 🌫<b>and</b> 🌈<b>and</b> 🌊<b>and</b> ☄...<br>You grab a 🖊 <b>and</b> start to 📝 all the scenarios on a note <b>and</b> wear 🎧 to listen to 🎶 to get into emotions, <b>and</b> read some 📚 for inspirations.<br>These might not be considered as so called <i>productive</i><b>and</b><i>efficient</i>. But still they are a signficant source of your work.";
@ -738,16 +764,16 @@ chap2.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap3 = document.getElementById("emoji3");
chap3.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
chap3.innerHTML = "Imagine that you will experiment the potentiality through a performance.<br> For you ⏱ <b>and</b> 💭 <b>and</b> 👁 <b>and</b> 👃<b>and</b> 👄 <b>and</b> 🦵 <b>and</b> ✋ are all materials.Now you are on the stage <b>and</b> moving your body as itself is your artistic langauge. <br>How does the every single movement prove its value? What you're producing is not an object, but rather moments <b>and</b> emotions.<br>Yes, it cannot be displayed on a shelf in a shop, because the performance exists only at the particular moment <b>and</b> place <b>and</b> with audiences near you. It would possibly be recorded as a video clip, but then the value of the document would become transformed, because the live interaction at that very instant won't stay there anymore. Meaning, you inspire 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 's impression, which is the very value of your work.";
chap3.innerHTML = "Imagine that you will experiment the potentiality through a performance.<br> For you ⏱ <b>and</b> 💭 <b>and</b> 👁 <b>and</b> 👃<b>and</b> 👄 <b>and</b> 🦵 <b>and</b> ✋ are all materials.<br>Now you are on the stage <b>and</b> moving your body as itself is your artistic langauge. <br>How does the every single movement prove its value? What you're producing is not an object, but rather moments <b>and</b> emotions.<br>Yes, it cannot be displayed on a shelf in a shop, because the performance exists only at the particular moment <b>and</b> place <b>and</b> with audiences near you. It would possibly be recorded as a video clip, but then the value of the document would become transformed, because the live interaction at that very instant won't stay there anymore. Meaning, you inspire 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 's impression, which is the very value of your work.";
chap4.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
chap4.innerHTML = "You may say you don't feel direct and obvious effect <b>and</b> influence that your performance brings. This is because what 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 purchased from you are emotions <b>and</b> experiences, which are composed of ⏱ <b>and</b> 💭 <b>and</b> ❕❔ .<br> You offer audiences an arena of the immaterial experiment. They feel and think without rules <b>and</b> limitations. Unknown energy is shared between you and them.<br>Your movement coming with the spectatorship is still located in a part of system, but at the same time it might be a gesture against the system that takes material <i>give and take</i> rule for granted.";
chap4.innerHTML = "You may say you don't feel direct and obvious effect <b>and</b> influence that your performance brings. This is because what 👨👨🦳👩🦱🧕 purchased from you are emotions <b>and</b> experiences, which are composed of ⏱ <b>and</b> 💭 <b>and</b> ❕❔ .<br> You offer audiences an arena of the immaterial experience. They feel and think as they want. Unknown energy is shared between you and them.<br>Your movement coming with the spectatorship is still located in a part of system, but at the same time it might be a gesture against the system that takes material <i>give and take</i> rule for granted.";
@ -755,8 +781,8 @@ chap4.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
var chap5 = document.getElementById("emoji5");
chap5.addEventListener('click', function changeText(){
chap5.innerHTML = "What <b>and</b> who do you work for?<br>You may feel the output that your work has a bit different features with other current products <b>and</b> commodities.<br>You may do art for your identity's sake, as well as for supporting yourself financially. Whether putting the label called 'labour' on your performance is a bit tricky, because you're standing between the establiment <b>and</b> your fundamental autonomy. Mediation among the dimensions are not easy as you think. Your practice that contains a lot of immaterial labours, <b>and</b> whether the labours are surely considered as classic labours is still controversial. Thus not only what you do, but also how you do is undecidable.";
chap5.innerHTML = "What <b>and</b> who do you work for?<br>The output made by your work seems to have a bit different features with other current products <b>and</b> commodities.<br>You may do art for your identity's sake, as well as for your living's sake. <br>Whether putting the label called 'labour' on your performance is a bit tricky, because you're standing between the establiment <b>and</b> your fundamental autonomy. Mediation of the ironic dimensions is not easy as you think. Your practice contains a lot of immaterial labours, <b>and</b> whether the labours are surely regarded as classic labours is still controversial. Thus, not only what you do, but also how you do is undecidable.";
