A curatorial collaboration between Year One MA Curating the Contemporary students and the Whitechapel Gallery.
Emily Lazerwitz and Ines Marques both investigate how language is in an ongoing, changing flux, guided by technologies and faster and faster ways to communicate in society. Emily Lazerwitz feels the pressure of the pace of communication today has led people to use very simple words and abbreviations which in themselves have become codes. She says: "having grown up with the development of the internet and social media, I have witnessed very personally how the expansion of these innovations has changed who I am and how I communicate. I am excited by the prospect of being able to interact instantaneously with anyone in the world through audio, visual and written means. However, these same technologies also limit my use of language through restrictions on length and vocabulary. Long, beautiful prose from past centuries currently has no place in this new environment — and that scares me”.
On the other hand, Marques is interested in the interaction between these new language codes and the relationship between images and words:
“In this world, learning language means changing your methods, and understanding that e-books, video-teaching, e-Mentoring and advance technology are replacing the old techniques of writing and reading. When learning code is as natural as learning a second language, how is this going to shape our language? This project shows a conversation that tries to make visible this transformation of words as image – how writing and reading can affect our speaking and listening – and where the dictionary makes a bridge between ages. When my 80-year-old eyes look through these pages, I can try to decode them”.
The artists are invited to speak about their thoughts and the different ways that they approach this subject.
| Date | Wednesday 25 March, 6pm |
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| Location | Central House |