Kunsthuis Syb

Visual artists Noa Giniger and musician Anat Spiegel (aka. Noon & Ain) create poems from cutouts of their own Gmail chats and WhatsApp correspondence; functional communication turns into pure poetry. In their texts, video works and audio recordings the duo explores different feminine and existential topics through a personal, friendship- based dialogue.

Noon & Ain originated in Kunsthuis SYB in 2011 as part of the project Zimmer For Fab and will return this summer to it’s birth place for a one week residency. The time in Kunsthuis SYB will focus on the creation of new materials towards a future publication and further exploring the duo’s innovative translation method.

 

Noon & Ain developed a unique translation method, which demonstrates the work’s systematic and intuitive nature. Not only does this method bring their Hebrew poems to non-Hebrew readers, but it also conveys, visually and textually, the multiplicity of interpretations available within a given poem.

The method consists of three steps:

1.Instant: the poem is translated on the spot, using the writers’ own (limited) English vocabulary.

2. Google: the poem is imported to Google translate and is then translated online.

3. Destination: the writers, in order to create a final version, merge the first two translations.

All three steps are visible to the reader. Both the computer and the humans involved in this process are depended on programming. Both are bound to the data they received and processed up to the moment of translation. Nevertheless, the ‘destination’, or final word, is determent by the human’s sense and sensibility.