Re-shift, Re-calibrate
Part Two: Geoff Clout, Joe Namy, David Steans
Curated by Myriam Mouflih

Part One →

10—12 Aug

Samra Mayanja
Touda Bouanani

Part Two →

11—13 Aug

Geoff Clout
Joe Namy
David Steans

Part Three →

12—14 Aug

Amelia Crouch
Jack Pell
Tabita Rezaire
James Thompson

Part Four →

13—15 Aug

Sophie Chapman
& Kerri Jefferis
Rhian Cooke
Karrabing Film Collective

Part Five →

14—16 Aug

Bethan Hughes
Evan Ifekoya
& SJ Rahatoka
Joanne Lee

Part Six →

15—17 Aug

Jenny Handley
Basim Magdy

Films
→ Inanimation – Washing Machine, Geoff Clout
→ Purple, Bodies in Translation, Joe Namy
→ Puppy the Goblin ENGLISH SUBS, David Steans

 Audio Accompaniment:
Artists David Steans and Joe Namy talk to Sara Ramos Pinto, Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds. They discuss subtitles as a literary form, the role of the translator, and whether words can help images to transcend cultural boundaries. Recorded remotely on 6 August between London, Leeds and Portugal. 

Inanimation – Washing Machine
Geoff Clout, 2010, UK, 2 min

This is the sound of a washing machine. I have subtitled is as closely as possible, in English. I planned to get the sound ‘translated’ into as many languages as possible … but failed. (Geoff Clout)

Geoff Clout is an artist and musician based in Leeds. His main interest is interacting with other people and then trying to make sense of it. He does this through music projects include Optimismo (with Jan Hannaghan), Mister Dodo Bones & the One-Eyed Lack, and Truists; and by making videos, sometimes in collaboration with artists Clare Charnley and Patricia Azevedo.

→ originalartist.co.uk
 Closed captions available through the ‘CC’ icon in the video playbar.

Purple, Bodies in Translation
Joe Namy, 2017, UK, 19 min

Normally presented as an immersive installation, Purple, Bodies in Translation is based on two texts that discuss the act of translating war and resilience. The work creates a reflective space for the audience to think through the intricacies of the wars in Syria and Iraq, mediated through testimony. The video merely shows a color: purple – when installed in a gallery a mirrored screen is used allowing the viewers to see their own reflection, to see themselves within the subtitled text.

Lina Mounzer’s essay ‘War in Translation: Giving Voice to the Women of Syria’ weaves the testimonies she is translating with her own personal experience of living through the civil war in Lebanon, and how her own experience shapes how she processes and internalizes the testimonies in order to distill the essence of the words. Stefan Tarnowski’s essay ‘Subtitling a Film’ describes the intricacies of translating subtitles for the anonymous film collective Abounaddara and the special collaborative process of working for someone he has never met. Tarnowski uses this experience to reflect on the role of the subtitle, the details lost in translation, and what additional elements and contradictions are created by the differences between subtitles and image. (Joe Namy)

Joe Namy is an artist, educator, and composer based between London and Beirut, often working collaboratively and across mediums—in sound, performance, photography, text, video, and installation. His projects often focus on the social constructs of music and organized sound, such as the pageantry and geo-politics of opera, the noise laws and gender dynamics of bass, the colors and tones of militarization, the migration patterns of instruments and songs, and the complexities of translation in all this – from language to language, from score to sound, from drum to dance. Namy graduated with an M.F.A. from New York University, and has been a lifelong student of jazz, arabic, and heavy metal drumming. He was a participant in the inaugural Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace independent study program, where he now teaches.

→ www.olivetones.com

Access
Subtitles and captions are part of this work, so no closed captions are available.

Puppy the Goblin ENGLISH SUBS
David Steans, 2020, UK, 14 min

Puppy the Goblin ENGLISH SUBS is a new narrative moving image work comprised entirely of voice, sound, music and text. Intended to function like an expanded, sound-tracked subtitle file, Puppy the Goblin ENGLISH SUBS is an exercise in dark, recursive storytelling that explores ideas around scripting, unreliable narration, and multiple subjectivities. An ambiguous transcription concerning ambiguous transcriptions.

Credits
Written by: David Steans
Voice of ‘Jaded Edge’: Hardeep Pandhal
Voice of ‘Steve’: David Steans
Voice of ‘DJ’: TJ Patrick
Music by: David Steans
Sound mix: Tom Sedgwick

David Steans is an artist based in Leeds, UK. Working mainly in moving image, writing, sound and music, he is interested in narrative and storytelling; horror; genre; artifice; ‘the voice’ as medium; and the ‘blurring’ of reality and fiction as creative method.

→ www.davidsteans.com

Access
English captions are part of this work so no closed captions are available.

 Recommended: Listen with headphones and watch in a dark room

This project is part of Film Feels Connected, a UK-wide cinema season, supported by the National Lottery and BFI Film Audience Network. Explore all films and events at filmfeels.co.uk