2013
Materials: pocket dictionaries
Dimensions: 10 x 7 cm (6 volumes)
Photo credits: Cameraphoto Arte / me
Installation view: Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice
Thanks to: Legatoria Clauser (Udine)
Materials: pocket dictionaries
Dimensions: 10 x 7 cm (6 volumes)
Photo credits: Cameraphoto Arte / me
Installation view: Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice
Thanks to: Legatoria Clauser (Udine)
Bilingual dictionary Hungarian – English and English – Hungarian divided in six small pocket-able volumes. Every translation is possible only through a long and unsure operation of intermediate translation that involves in every volume from three to four different languages. This interference opens the object’s functionality to new meanings and tries to give interpretation to some sentences and reflections from the novel that can be translated as “The island” (original title A sziget, 1934) by Hungarian writer Sándor Márai (Kosice 1900 – San Diego 1989).
These languages testify and merge places, people and memories from the journey of Victor Henrik Askenasi, the novel’s main character, through the Adriatic Sea with real and biographical aspects linked to the Hungarian writer life between Europe and United States. These volumes gives shape to the continuous and almost obsessive series of questions about life that the main character engaged during his journey, putting us in front of ruminations about destiny, love, silence, the research of satisfaction, the meaning of words and languages. All these reflections are here represented through a long, unsure action of translation always suspended from its beginning and its end.
