Subbing The Subbing
2016 Made in Bangkok, Thailand
Work format: Video installation (Dimension variable)
Materials: 2 TVs
Introduction:
In Spain, there is a town inhabited by people with the surname Japón, which means Japan in Spanish.
400 years ago a group of Samurai traveled to Europe for some missions.
During their journey, Christianity was prohibited in Japan and some of the Samurais decided to remain to live in Spain to live as Christian. Those named Japón in the Spanish town today are regarded as possible descendants of the Samurai from history.
The work EL JAPONÉS aligns the artist himself as a “Japanese person who just came from Japan” and Mrs. Japón as a “descendant of historically the first migrant from Japan”.
The dialog itself looks like a simple praise of communication but the two juxtaposed "Japanese" people imply and ask different notions such as "nationality", "race" and "immigrant integration".
Special thanks: Mr. and Ms. Japóns whom I met in Coria del Rio
POETRY IN TRANSLATIONS
From 2009 - (ongoing)
Work format: Sentence, Translation and re-translations
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Introduction:
“Poetry in Translations” a series of Poetry, is made from re-translations by multiple languages.
If you look at the old Buddhist Scriptures in Japan, they are often translated from Chinese, which has been translated from Sanskrit. Therefore a Japanese version of such scriptures is somewhat different from the originals due to re-translations.
Also, the Christian holy bible in Japan is re-translated and has some discrepancies from the original.
Some claim that such discrepancies contributed the birth of Japanese versions of the preexisting religions. Those re-translated versions were their official documents.
In this series of poetry, the first line will be translated into another language, and then retranslated again and again with machine translations. This action will be done until it creates a different meaning; like we travel to “other” places in order to make a different sense of the meaning of our life. In this artwork, translations imply journeys and this artwork tries to capture “poetry-ness” arising within processes of translation themselves.