Muntadas: On Translation: On Translation: Museum - Tapa blanda

From one language to another, one voice through a telephone through an ear into an email through a fax machine via a satellite hookup, a third language, a photograph and four hybrid cultures ... you know what I mean. Problems of translation have long fascinated Antoni Muntadas. In a 1995 manifesto the artist proclaimed his concern with the way in which the transmission of information through different systems and its subsequent translation can transform, fragment, deform and even obscure or censor any original meaning. That concern has fed the ongoing On Translation series through projects which vary greatly in terms of their formalization, projects which pose questions about such themes as the identity of artistic practice, the idea of its social value, and the possibilities of representation, curatorial interpretation, transcription and conservation of heritage.

. Mary Anne Staniszewski is an Associate Professor in the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and author of "The Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations at the Museum of Modern Art" (MIT Press) and, during the past twenty-five years, has overseen or contributed to various Exit Art publications and projects.