Qalqalah قلقلة Plus d’une langue

Exhibition

From 7 March to 6 September 2020

Curator: Virginie Bobin and Victorine Grataloup

With Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Sophia Al Maria , Mounira Al Solh, Noureddine Ezarraf, Fehras Publishing Practices, Benoît Grimalt, Wiame Haddad, Vir Andres Hera, The institute for incongruous translation (Natascha Sadr Haghighian et Ashkan Sepahvand) avec Can Altay, Serena Lee, Scriptings #47 : Man schenkt keinen Hund, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Sara Ouhaddou, Temporary Art Platform (Works on Paper).

Graphic intervention : Montasser Drissi.
Opening event and press visit 6 March 2020.

The name Qalqalah قلقلة comes from two short stories by Egyptian curator and researcher Sarah Rifky [1]. The eponymous heroine of these works of fiction, Qalqalah, is an artist and linguist who inhabits a near future reconstructed by the financial crisis and the popular revolts of the 2010s. Her poetic meditations on languages, translation, and their critical and imagining power accompanied our reflections, and have stayed with us ever since. Qalqalah قلقلة became an online research platform involving three languages (Arabic, French and English) and two
alphabets, and now it is taking the form of an exhibition.

The title Qalqalah قلقلة : plus d’une langue [Qalqalah قلقلة : More Than One Language] orchestrates a meeting between our heroine and a quote by Jacques Derrida. In Monolingualism of the Other [2] , the philosopher, born in 1930 in Algeria, writes of his ambiguous relationship with the French language, ensnared
in military and colonial history. The book begins with a paradoxical statement : “ I have only one language; it is not mine ”, contradicting any proprietary, fixed or unequivocal definition of language—whether it be French (as the researcher Myria Suchet nicely puts it, the “ s ” in “ français ” should be understood as a mark of plurality), Arabic (taught as a “ foreign language ” in colonial Algeria, and today the second most widely spoken language in France, in its various dialects) or English (a globalised language that is dominant in contemporary art).

These three languages will come together in the exhibition, each bringing its own political, historical and poetic issues that intersect and respond to one another. Letters and voices will run through the exhibition, reminding us that languages are inseparable from speaking and listening bodies — all speakers express themselves “ also through their eyes and facial expressions (yes, language has a face)” [3], to borrow the words of Moroccan writer and researcher Abdelfattah Kilito.

The works echo multiple, hybrid languages, acquired in the course of family migrations, personal exile or uprooted encounters. Native, secondary, adoptive, migrant, lost, imposed, common, minor, invented, pirated, contaminated languages… How do we speak (to each other) in more than one language, using
more than one alphabet? How we listen from within the place and language in which we find ourselves? Between the lines, the exhibition examines the perspective from which we view works, according to the political and social imaginations that shape us.

Most of the invited artists place the works’ publication, circulation and reception modalities at the heart of their practice. Operations of translation, transliteration, rewriting, archiving, publication, republication, montage, even casting and karaoke appear as attempts to offer the eyes and ears stories that are sometimes evasive. Beyond a linguistic approach, it is about establishing a space in which plural stories and heterogeneous accounts can be presented, based on one possible meaning—in more than one language—of the Arabic word قلقلة : “ a movement of language, a phonetic vibration, a bounce or echo ” [4]

Virginie Bobin and Victorine Grataloup

About QALQALAH قلقلة

QALQALAH قلقلة is a non-profit association founded in August 2018 by Virginie Bobin (curator, researcher and translator, PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna) and Victorine Grataloup (curator, and lecturer at Paris-Sorbonne University). The aim of QALQALAH قلقلة is to create a platform for artistic exchanges, research and translation, in the form of an online publication (to be launched in March 2020), and also through events, workshops and conversations. It brings together international artists, theorists and researchers engaged in articulating artistic, political and social problems, particularly those
who are concerned by issues linked to translation and interaction between languages, especially French, Arabic and English.
The QALQALAH قلقلة editorial committee consists of Line Ajan, Virginie Bobin, Victorine Grataloup and Vir Andres Hera.

QALQALAH قلقلة took root in the magazine Qalqalah created by Bétonsalon and KADIST in Paris. It was active from 2015 to 2018. It is named after a character in a short story by Sarah Rifky, in which the eponymous heroine, an artist and linguist inhabiting a near future, gradually loses her memory in a world where notions of language, art, economy and nation have quietly collapsed. In this world of reconstituted, fluid knowledge, a world one does not know whether to hope for or fear, the meaning of the Arabic word Qalqalah—“ a movement of language, a phonetic vibration, a bounce or echo ” [5] —resonates as a possible navigation tactic.

[1] Sarah Rifky, “ Qalqalah : The Subject of Language ”, in Qalqalah no. 1, KADIST/Bétonsalon – Villa Vassilieff, 2015 ; and “ Qalqalah : Thinking History”, in Qalqalah no. 2, KADIST / Bétonsalon – Villa Vassilieff, 2016

[2] Jacques Derrida, "Monolingualism of the Other", Stanford University Press, 1998

[3] Abdelfattah Kilito, Tu ne parleras pas ma langue (in French), translated from the Arabic (Morocco), Actes Sud, 2008

[4] n “ Qalqalah : The Subject of Language ”, ibid

[5] Sarah Rifky, “ Qalqalah :The Subject of Language ”, in Qalqalah no. 1, KADIST / Bétonsalon - Villa Vassilieff, 2015.