Coordination of the catalogue
Venue: Spanish Pavilion, Venice, 2005
Curator: Bartomeu Marí
Graphic Design: Eumogràfic

51st VENICE BIENNIAL
SPANISH PAVILION

On occasion of Spain’s participation in the 51st edition of the Venetian Biennale, curator Bartomeu Marí invited Catalan artist Antoni Muntadas to produce a site-specific installation. Thus arose On Translation: I Giardini which propounds, according to Marí, “a consideration of the ‘Biennial machine’ through its actual location and its role, not only in the context of contemporary art but as a stage on which the geopolitical and cultural conflict of our age and its forms of representation are enacted”.
The bilingual catalogue of the exhibition was coordinated by Josephine Watson and includes essays by international critics and theorists Marc Augé and Raymond Bellour, and connoisseurs of Muntadas’ oeuvre, Eugeni Bonet, Bartomeu Marí, Vittoria Martini and Angela Vetesse, as well as the artist’s own notes and a conversation he held with Mark Wigley.

«On Translation is a series of works exploring issues of transcription, interpretation and translation.
From language to codes
From subjectivity to objectivity
From agreement to wars
From semiology to cryptography
The role of translation/translators as a visible/invisible fact.»
Muntadas, 1995

POSTED BY JOSEPHINE WATSON ON 18 SEPTEMBER 2005