For the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal no. 16, Art Issue

 

“…she was constantly urging herself from interpretation to erotics, from discourse to intercourse, from thinking to feeling.”
Lauren Elkin on Susan Sontag, in a review of As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

I often find myself writing in bed. Turns of phrase later adapted for publication or art exhibits were usually first written there. They appear in journal entries, in notes jotted down when trying to record some encounter with a beloved or desired being. The things that would later come to occupy me intellectually would come in flashes, moments of vulnerability brought on by my poor attempts at transcendence.

“Every beautiful work, or even every impressive work, functions as a desired work, albeit one that’s incomplete and as it were lost because I didn’t write it myself; in order to recover that work, I have to rewrite it; to write is to want to rewrite: I want to actively add myself to something that’s beautiful, but that I lack, that I require.”
Roland Barthes, The Preparation of The Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France (1978-1979 and 1979-1980)

Barthes writes about the problem of the lampshade — the darkest space is the one right next to the light source. Speaking from the center of something is the most difficult position — there is too much dazzlement. I’m never able to conjure up a clear picture of a new crush’s face. The lover needs the lover’s discourse. I duck out from under my own lampshade to seek light sources elsewhere — to begin a collection of forms and points of view that, when taken together, might reveal something of myself.

The seductiveness of the other is then tied to what I want for myself, a desire to possess, a search for satisfaction. This erotic impulse becomes loving when space is given over to what might become a cure, or at least a salve.

The minimum condition for true love is possessing sufficient courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other.
Alain Badiou in his introduction to Byung-Chul Han’s The Agony of Eros

Earlier this year, there was some attention given to wives being thanked by their husband-writers for typing notes or manuscripts, circulating via the hashtag #ThanksForTyping. They were always referred to simply as “my wife”, in a single line of acknowledgement in their male partners’ oeuvres.

To someone who knows very little of translation, it may seem comparable to the typing done by these nameless wives — find the equivalent of the author’s meaning, type it on a page. The reality of it is messier, less precise. An instance of being able to say this means only this is a rare gift. Instead, as with most relationships between two separate beings, the act of translation is a complicated back and forth, with egos and viewpoints bobbing to the surface and retreating back under. Movements of erotic undertone come to mind: advance and recede, submit and dominate. The translator and the text are past the moment of seduction and in search of the climactic. Passivity and aggression must be accepted on both sides. The text is ingested to become not just read but understood. This interiorization of another may begin with the erotic act but inevitably, surreptitiously, ends as a loving one. Some disappearance, or putting aside, of the ego occurs — at least enough for the translated text to appear written —conceived in the language of its current embodiment. How do you find the right word to describe a painting you’ve never seen? Or to speak positively of a thing you hate?

The writers I translate are almost always strangers with whom I have little to no contact. Any feedback will be communicated through a third party: an editor, a gallery. I’ll have some familiarity with their writing on occasion, but I mostly go in cold, as if on a blind date. Intimacy is achieved purely through the text — style, thesis, and worldview becoming apparent in degrees, line by line. I’ll search for tone and meaning as closely as I might when texting with the aforementioned date. This first moment of becoming acquainted with the text and the author behind it is when I’ll allow myself the most vulnerability. I’ll let the text pass through me in the most direct way possible to reappear in an English that’s not yet mine. Only during the second time around will the text begin to sound like me, words and phrases are nudged into place, leading the conversation to where I want it to go. A third and final writing will bring the two together, correcting what might have overshot, letting the text settle into a sweet spot. This is coupling — with the one and the other coming together to become a new singular body. The aspiration for the translated text is for the author and the translator to each feel as if the words on the pages are the ones they meant to say. The moment of ecstasy, with the translator leaving no more trace than a strand of hair or scent on a pillow.

A few months ago, I translated a text by a writer who was completely unknown to me about a small, strange town I was very familiar with. He was taken by many of the small, local peculiarities that had also charmed me. A few weeks later we met by chance and a few beats after hearing his name, I realized who he was. Suddenly, a ritualized, forgettable interaction at an art opening became warmed by the intimacy of our shared experience. He brought with him my memories of the desert we had both visited and of trying to find the right words to describe its light and buildings and the faces of locals.

The erotic and the loving are maybe easier to identify, at least in obvious ways, in the act of curating. The curators of this year’s Venice Biennale and Documenta were each criticized for the inclusion of their respective partners in these high-profile exhibitions. It is difficult for me to feel surprised — or really, any strong emotion at all about this. Doesn’t this seem inevitable? At Shanaynay, a project space I co-directed for a time, a funny pattern revealed itself: each member, before they left the space, would organize a show that included his or her partner. These exhibitions were not always each person’s last, or planned with that timing, but were the most personal symptoms of a current obsession or preoccupation. Because of this, the inclusion of romantic partners never felt forced and was rarely questioned.

 How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces is the collection of Barthes’s lecture notes on the concept of idiorrhthym, a productive form of co-existence, in which the individual rhythms of each partner are brought together in harmony. He describes it as solitude with regular interruptions, the utopia of a socialism of distance. It is also described as a fantasy life that knows only positives, in which one can simultaneously want to live alone and together.

It often feels though that curating has become an erotic act quite devoid of love. There is too little willingness to negate oneself, the aggression too exaggerated. That harmonious aspect doesn’t seem to be there anymore, and is instead replaced by a cacophony of group exhibitions curated on the internet. This fantasy has everyone wanting to appear intimate with everyone else. There’s no real affection, only the veneer of amicability to cover up alienation. Everyone in it for his or her own climax. The element of care is missing, that ancient notion at the root of “curate”.

I feel myself fighting against it at times, trying to protect my own ego and my own energies from the demands of others. From care to self-care. I don’t know how to accurately apply notions like “emotional labor” or “working hours” to my own life. Sometimes I ask myself: What parts of these interactions are to be blamed on my “métier” or biology or the patriarchy? I’ve gone through moments of trying to imagine myself simply as a vessel or a caretaker but that doesn’t last long. My fantasy still includes moments of solitude.

The duo, the couple, the pair — two is the smallest unit of collaboration and the first step outside of solitude. What are the things that allow another’s ideas and working methods to intrude on one’s own, or to go further, become representative of one’s own? What kind of negotiations must be made? What kind of dance allows one to become two? It’s probably a dance that is never mastered; it could be done clumsily but exuberantly in moments of intoxication, or stiffly in more careful ones. At its best it would feel effortless.

I like to think I’ve been given glimpses of this kind of ease. At the moment, there is only one person I refer to as my “partner” in any context and we don’t live in the same country but speak every day. She and I work together, and our conversations move seamlessly from our lives, to gossip, to art, from my native tongue to hers. There are moments when I am annoyed that she has an idea that is too close to one of mine. We’ve tied ourselves to each other in a way that even our individual endeavors become reflections on each other. I’ve adopted certain nuances of her speech and vice versa; when I read I am sometimes uncertain if ideas or phrases stay with me because they appeal to me or to her.

Although there are instances of being struck on first sight by either love or lust — translation, curating, and intimacy are ultimately matters of choice. A selection is made — the general, the unknown, the foreign, the broad becomes narrowed down to the specific. This text is selected to be made accessible for a new audience. These words will communicate this thought. This work by this artist deserves to be shown at this time. This person is the one I want. I recognize that the sheer volume of things to be seen and read and heard has backed me into a rather sentimental corner. I once cried on the first viewing of work made by a new lover. It felt like the kind of art I would have made if I were capable. It tricked me into believing something about us, but it was mostly about me.

Maybe I’m a selfish lover in that I can only give to whom I want to give. Faced with the daunting size of the encyclopedic act, I choose the loving one, the desirous one. If it is impossible to write the self, I take the oblique angle in.