This project attempts to position relationships between people and places, like communication, as a fluid, ongoing process of translation, interpretation and mediation. The project is designed to evolve collaboratively and will function as a mediated dialogue between three artists from Kitchener and three artists from Berlin with additional collaborators providing German and English translation.
In both Kitchener and Berlin, three local artists (as 'guides') choose a local site of particular significance to them and are videotaped explaining the history and significance of their chosen site in their home language. The 'guides' will be asked to select locations of personal significance and will be free to tell truths, fictions or something in between.
The six artists also act as 'interpreters', by responding to the videos in the other language and attempting to translate them. The artists are video taped as they attempt to interpret their counterpart's story in real time. The 'interpreters' either make a genuine attempt at translation based on their knowledge of the other language, or interpret whatever seems appropriate from the guide's performance and location.
The final work is a single channel video combining both the images from Berlin and the responses from Kitchener, and the images from Kitchener and the responses from Berlin, into a split screen image with subtitles.
Rachelle Viader Knowles is an installation artist working primarily in lens-based media and site-specific practice. Originally from the UK, she moved to Canada in 1994 to study at the University of Windsor and is currently based between Toronto and her hometown of Cardiff, Wales. Her works have been exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Windsor and YYZ, Red Head and Pekao galleries in Toronto. In 2000, her video installation We Are Not Who We Were (1999) was exhibited at the Kwangju Biennale, South Korea. Rachelle is a participating artist in the Art Gallery of Ontario's Artists With Their Work program and a past member of the Red Head Gallery in Toronto.