Translating Ideas
transmit . translate . transform
a global cultural conversation

melbourneconnectionasia 2003
Publication essay

Translating Ideas
transmit . translate . transform
a global cultural conversation

Maggie McCormick
2003

What if there were 27 letters in the English alphabet?

How can we create new connections, new interpretations, new ways of thinking? What new ideas, new translations can we make through cultural dialogue?

There are countless languages and dialects, cultures and sub cultures. We can never fully understand the complexities of different cultural experiences. Not in one lifetime. For many though, there is an opportunity to explore common ideas which cross cultures. Out of this opportunity comes the challenge to create a new vocabulary of image and text.

The Internet is a vital player in this cultural interaction, transmitting, generating and facilitating the exchange and the creation of knowledge and ideas. As space and time between places and people compress, we are as likely to find identification with ideas from across the world, as we are likely to find ourselves out of step with our own cultural roots.

This is true for contemporary urban artists who are on the virtual and physical move in this rapidly shrinking global world. Some move because of changing times and political pressure, seeking freedom of thought and action, some move to take up the opportunities that new technologies have opened up, to seek out, find and connect with others.


Urban artists are activating global cities, new public spaces of dialogue. These constructions are not located in any one cultural arena but are rather a fusion, a translation of and from, one experience to the other and back again.

Translation makes the unfamiliar familiar. But translation - of words and images - can never totally reflect the original meaning, as rapidly changing times bring with them multiple meanings. Readers/viewers brings their own interpretation, their own experience to the translation, as does the translator. This includes both the limitations and the potential of their language and understanding. Somewhere in the space where translation takes place there is a new meaning, a fusion of understandings and experiences - new thoughts, new ideas.

Translation as conversation.

This is the context for a global cultural identity that finds its roots in the global by reinterpreting the local, with the artist as global cultural translator.

The global concept has brought with it new words creeping into all our vocabularies, bringing with them new ideas. Global translation of ideas is often seen as Internationalism, an absorption and negation of one culture by another, primarily a corporatisation or Westernisation of culture. This is a reality that needs to be addressed but there is also another very powerful positive transformation evolving - the expression, recognition and fusion of diverse ideas in a dialogue of equality. This fusion does not negate other cultural connections of the artist that are based on history, geography or ethnicity, but rather transforms and redefines cultural identity in the context of global citizenship.

These ideas are the conceptual basis for the public projects undertaken by urbanart. urbanart is an artist initiative, based in Melbourne, Australia, with a global focus on urban space and the relationship of contemporary art and ideas to cultural identity. urbanart public projects create dialogues by establishing spaces for cultural translation amongst artists, and between artists and the public.

This conceptual base is reflected in action - what urbanart does. Recent projects include Kultural Kommuting (Melbourne/Berlin), @ global city (54 artists from 45 cities) and Global Fusion (Melbourne/Vienna).

melbourneconnectionasia, the 2003 urbanart public project, focuses on the Asia Pacific region and the urban spaces of Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Manila, Yogyakarta and Shanghai.

The 25 invited artists are from diverse cultural backgrounds. Many have traveled, exhibited, lived and undertaken residencies in many different places across the globe. The art spaces in Asia that these artists are associated with also reflect a diverse cultural mix of Australian/Malaysian, Russian/Vietnamese, Dutch/Indonesian and Swiss/Chinese.

A global city has been activated through melbourneconnectionasia. Ideas, in image and text, have been transmitted, translated and transformed between cities and cultures, between artists and the public. Contemporary issues of concern to artists in this region, including political agendas, personal states of being, human rights, sars, the rights of women and critiques of the West, have been revealed on the streets of Melbourne throughout 2003, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As large scale street posters in public transport shelters, these images and texts have been viewed through diverse eyes in this city of multi layered cultures. The poster format has brought the ideas and issues into the public arena, integrated into the constructed space of the city itself. Melbourne minds have engaged with challenging concepts rather than advertising posters urging consumerism, that would usually occupy this public space. Viewed as fragments in an urban landscape, the images and texts of these posters rather propose a human discourse resulting in a regional visual literacy.

The importance of the work in melbourneconnectionasia lies in the translation itself - the dialogue between people, place and culture. The 27th letter.

Maggie McCormick
2003

Maggie McCormick is an artist and a founding member of urbanart. She created the public stage on which the melbourneconnectionasia translations took place.

Her photo/text installations have been exhibited in Australia, Europe and most recently in P.R.China. She is a Master of Fine Art candidate at RMIT University, Melbourne and teaches at the International Public Art Unit, RMIT.