To Make Sense of a World: Translation, Germaine Koh, Globalization

This thesis proposes that Vancouver-based artist Germaine Koh’s (b. 1967) practice demonstrates the political and ethical dilemmas of translation within a globalized world. Here, translation is understood as a practice that aims to question means of navigating and interpreting through globalization’s afforded networks; it tries to make sense of global macro problem areas at micro levels. As I argue, Koh’s work tries to make sense of the social matter emerging from increasingly estranging geo-political, geo-economic, and geo-cultural realities. I have divided my text into four parts to I explore the ways in which Koh’s work performs acts of translation. In part one of this thesis, Translation: Prayers, I define and consider translation as the practice of interpreting and/or converting under two basic orders: 1) those that pertain to meaning and form; and 2) those that pertain to movement and positioning. In part two, Globalization: Alienation, I delineate the global world I am referring to and demonstrate how translation functions in terms of mobility. In part three, Social: Connections, I engage with Koh’s work to consider how globalization uses translation as a tool to foster both social alienation and social interdependency. And in part four, The Double Bind, I elaborate upon the central contradiction at hand, where translation surfaces as both the problem and the solution. Indeed, Germaine Koh’s work exposes the contradictions of translation and of globalization. In that translation is able to afford globalization its reach and ability to communicate across languages and currency, this text questions whether translation can accordingly perform critical efforts against globalization.

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