How eyes can hear and ears can see: an exposition on experiential translation
(2025)
author(s): Ricarda Vidal, Madeleine Campbell
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition brings together the epistemologies of art-making and translation. It presents a series of artworks the curators commissioned for a travelling exhibition on ‘Experiential Translation’ (2022-2025). Many of the works were created under the auspices of the Experiential Translation Network, which facilitates collaboration and exchange between translators, writers, poets, artists and scholars from across the globe.
The concept of ‘experiential translation’ as elaborated by Campbell and Vidal (2019, 2024, 2025), highlights embodied, multimodal communication as a performative inquiry into meaning-making. Blending art and translation practices, experiential translation values materiality, participation, and co-creation. Rather than mere transfer of meaning, translation is seen as a process of discovery, research, and knowledge production, embracing the unknown and exploring that which escapes language.
Encouraging a rhizomatic viewing experience, the exposition is structured into three interconnected thematic 'rooms', Serial Metamorphosis, (Un)repetition and Ludic Translation, which can be visited in any order, or even simultaneously.
The exposition includes video art, performance, (interactive) installation, sound art, poetry, painting and photography.
This work was supported by the AHRC under Grant AH/V008234/1, awarded to Ricarda Vidal (PI) and Madeleine Campbell (Co-I) .
Ethical Clearance Reference Number (King’s College London): MRA-22/23-34543
