Glossary: TRANSLATION. By Paula Caspão

“In other words…”

TRANSLATION will be explored in a broad sense. That is to say, not exclusively as a practice of linguistic and cultural transposition but more extensively as a set of situated movements of transformation that are transversal – translatable – into other areas of activity; difficult movements (often not good-flowing) that imply manifold relationships, negotiations, and changes. TRANS-LATION then as a multifaceted activity that entails a wide set of delicate operations, that very often open the door to an infinite cohort of “false friends”, that in their turn invite a wide set of variable co-o-o-o…
Breathe. Recapitulate. It’s your turn: The lecture will hover between waves of strict dissection and waves of wild weaving and speculation – mainly addressing the issues of WHERE, WHEN, and HOW translation can take (or make) place. As we can never do anything on a blank background, I guess there will be noise all along the ride.

Paula Caspão
A writer, researcher and dramaturge based in Paris, working at the crossroads of choreographic performance and other fields, and between theory and practice. She explores the modalities of knowledge contained in fiction, as well as the multiple fictional aspects of knowledge. She is interested in the politics/economies of perception, of movement and discourse. In the frame of her literary and videographic work, she has been collecting materials across heterogeneous areas and non-areas: conversations heard on the streets, weather forecasting, road movies, gastronomy, politics, geography, old time radio novels, (hi)stories of animals, objects, plants, and ghosts. She is currently preparing Rhododendrons in the Redwoods – Postcards from California, the first episode of a series of video-graphic objects. She collaborated with choreographers João Fiadeiro (P), Petra Sabisch (D), Alix Eynaudi (F/B), Anne Juren (F/A), Agata Maszkiewicz (PL/A), Valentina Desideri (I/F). Her writings have been published in revues and anthologies internationally (Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the USA). She holds a PhD in philosophy/epistemology (University Paris-10), in the specific domains of philosophy of art and science, performance theories, choreographic arts and philosophy of language. She is the author of the book Chorégraphies contemporaines: Images et usages du sensible (forthcoming).