The next episode of the cycle OGR YOU will see the participation of the Berlin-based collective Slavs & Tatars.

On May 22, at 6 pm, Slavs & Tatars will perform the lecture Transliterative Tease.

The ironic title is a wordplay that resists literal translation.

Here is how the artists describe it: “Through the lens of phonetic, semantic, and theological slippage, Transliterative Tease explores the potential for transliteration–the conversion of scripts–as a strategy equally of resistance and research into notions such as identity politics, colonialism, and faith. Lenin believed that the revolution of the east begins with the Latinization of the alphabets of all Muslims living in the USSR. The lecture-performance focuses on the Turkic languages of the former Soviets, as well as the eastern and western frontiers of this language group, namely Anatolia and Xinjiang in China. The march of alphabets has always accompanied that of empires–Arabic with the rise of Islam, Latin with that of Roman Catholicism, and Cyrillic with the Orthodox Church and subsequently communism. The lecture attempts not to emancipate peoples or nations but rather the sounds rolling off our tongues.”

Transliterative Tease has been presented at Manifesta 10, St. Petersburg; ICA, London; Detroit Institute of Art; Istanbul Modern and Yale Art Gallery, among others. The lecture-performance is held in collaboration with ar/ge kunst, Bozen (hosting Kirchgängerbanger, the first Italian solo exhibition by Slavs & Tatars, from 18 May to 27 July) and Liveworks/Centrale Fies, Dro (19 July).

The talk will be in English, with simultaneous translation in Italian.

Slavs and Tatars is an internationally-renowned art collective devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Salt, Istanbul; Vienna Secession, Kunsthalle Zurich and Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances. Slavs and Tatars have published eight books to date, including Mirrors for Princes (JRP|Ringier, 2015), Not Moscow Not Mecca (Revolver/Secession, 2012), as well as their translation of the legendary Azerbaijani satirical periodical Molla Nasreddin (currently in its 2nd edition with I.B. Tauris).

www.slavsandtatars.com