¿PLACE OF UNDERSTANDING?
portable DVD player, mirror, animated text, audio
2'x2' on wall and 4'x1'x1' pedestal
2006

 

I asked about the plants that I saw on the side of a crater while I was in riding in the back of a truck in Ecuador. A woman who farmed the land adjacent to the national park read the landscape almost as if it was a text. In this piece I explored how landscapes become differentiated and both understood and misunderstood through narrative and translation. Three simultaneous translations flow across the screen: the first is my attempt to tell the stories in Spanish that I heard in Spanish from the woman farmer. The next line of text is how a native speaker of Spanish understood my telling of the story and the third line of text is how I understand and tell the story in English.

image of piece and video stills