‘Translation’ is the central provocation animating the various performances and installations that make up Season 9 of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, which took place from 26 to 30 October 2022.

Here, co-curators Mandla Mbothwe and Athena Mazarakis frame the interests, inquiries, challenges and possibilities of a Season of new collaborative and interdisciplinary creative work through two separate, but complementary texts.

Curatorial Statement – Translation #1:
Mandla Mbothwe

In response to the provocation of ‘Translation’ as a word and concept, we asked ourselves, “As story tellers of multiple tongues, what is it that we have been doing that is not Translation?”

Thina sizizi thunywa zengqiqo, ngokuphengulula nokuguqu-guqulela imiyalezo nemiyalelo.

This is a journey of translation and transformation, of transferring and transcending.

Thina sisi zithunywa. We, the message-bearers, the hauliers and carriers. Sithunyiwe!

By roots and umbilical cords through gestural sounds. Harvesting ways of knowing and planting dreams. Amathongo namaphupha. Sithi this is not the burying of meaning but the excavation of possibilities – ferrying narratives of tongues in their multiplicity. Sibekindlebe, siphuthume ubunxanxha.

The first village of translators coalesced gifts and powers of collectively summoning language; moulding it, interpreting it, translating it, transforming it. If ever there was a genesis, this was it and these were the people. It is language as a verb – a community crafting itself. Abantwa bodaka nomlilo ngabe ngomso. Progenitors of human speech, spirituality and the self – collecting coded points that mutate into information and metamorphosise into knowledge, parables and stories. Abaguquleli bezomoya nezamathongo. Vibrating idiophones and musical notes ignite motion, and dance-forms become praises and prayers.

Through the journey of translating the interpreted and interpreting the translated, we rupture all possible meanings. Tenses and senses hold multiple beings. Abombathi besikhumba sebhkhwe. We translate through time and in the process, displace time.

This journey for both the artist and curators was never innocent from political tension. What needs translation? Why? For who? What are its curses and gifts in our performances?

At the heart of what we do is the compression of knowledge in order to heal ourselves. Sicudisa ulwazi, siluguqulele ekuphiliseni uluntu. And we continue doing that as we traverse the known and the unknown. From breath to fire to kraal, stone to slope, cave drawings to paper and puppets, dreams, lights, strings, speakers, dance floors and grey tattooed concrete floors – our stories trans-mutate, altering themselves and changing us in turn. Singabaphengululi bamagada entlanti namaxhanti azo, kuba kaloku Thina sondele nokuphutshelwa.

Speaking in tongues, through the warm breath of fire, we sing the songs of earth‘s lamentations. Through our dreams, winds whisper sweet melodies of what is still to come. Izithunywa zolimo nesivuno sazo.

Listen carefully to sentences of tenses and tensions of in-betweens, to crackling sounds between crevices of knowledge(s). Learn to hear the songs as they dance in translation. Ngoma. Ingoma. Abengoma. The poetry of our bodies and the sounds of our imaginations.

Ngxe ngesi kuphosileyo-ngxe kwabo esibanyathele emsileni.

Curatorial Statement – Translation #2:
Athena Mazarakis

We are always and already in translation [from trans (Latin) – across, beyond – and latus (Latin) – carried or borne]. From impulse to gesture, idea to action, feeling to form – as performers, makers and artists, we are constantly engaged in the process of translation. Through the creative act, where experiences, perspectives, questions and insights are carried or borne across into material form, to create is to translate, and to translate is also to create.

On this foundation of translation as implicit process, Season 9 invites us into an explicit response to translation as a provocation [from provocacion (Old French, 12th Century) – incitement, urging – and provocationem (Latin) – a calling forth, a summoning, a challenge].

Our first tool as curators, in this act of incitement, urging, summoning and calling forth, was, perhaps paradoxically, the act of listening. To bring the artists into a space of deep listening, both to themselves and to each other. Ukulalela | Ho mamela | Écouter, a primary and essential step in the process of translation. We listened in order to build a village, a community for shared making, but which soon became a microcosm of our complex multilingual and multicultural society. We embodied and enacted the complexities of translation around us. The listening called forth, summoned and questioned how we translated ourselves and each other in our personal and collective response to the provocation, providing rich touch points for exploration.

While language – its translation, mistranslation, resistance to translation and what falls through the cracks of translation – is a steady beat throughout the Season, the 25 or so works that emerge in Season 9 reflect a depth of response to the layered aspects of Inguqulo| Mετάφραση | Tlhanolo | Translation.

There is the telling of old tales with new tongues; the translation of materials not only into metaphor but as portals between the world of matter and that of spirit and the translation of space – employing performance as a tool that translates site into place that is both here and somewhere else, real and imagined. There is the translation of dreams into image, sound and movement and the re-translation of those into meaning; the embedded meanings of names and how they link us to history, memory and identity and translate us in the world. There are the ways we are translated through language; the translation of roots and cultural belonging translated through our lived experiences; and the translation of material from one discipline to another. There is also the re-interpretation and intermedial translation of scores; the translation of codes across bodies, voices, objects and forms; and the translation of grief into hope.

Some of the works respond to the provocation by overtly resisting or rejecting translation. Their resistance invites a confrontation with what is lost when we find ourselves outside of a particular code, whether this be linguistic, social or cultural. At the same time, they invite an awareness of what remains available to translation while bringing the subjectivity of the translator strongly into focus.

Others shoulder the burden of translation and surface the proverbial question of what is gained but also what and who is lost in the process of translation, casting us once more in our central role as translators – bringing meaning to what we see, miss, understand and misunderstand. Central to it all is a process of translation that begins through provocation and reverberates long after the lights of this Season have gone out.