Ella McCartney. To Act / To Know / To Be

About

Fuelled by an interest in gesture, process and translation, the works have been created in response to current research on ‘translanguaging’, a new way of understanding language and the meaning-making process.

‘For me, translanguaging is both going between different linguistic structures and systems, including different modalities (speaking, writing, signing, listening, reading, remembering) and going beyond them. It includes the full range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of information and the representation of values, identities and relationships.

The act of translanguaging then is transformative in nature; it creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful performance, and making it into a lived experience. I call this space ‘‘translanguaing space’’, a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a space created through translanguaging.’ (Li Wei (2011) Moment analysis and translanguaging space: discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5), pp 1222-1235

The exhibition will include a three- hour sound track and a live performance with Amy Harris and Ruby Embley on Friday 10th March 6-9pm.