Alaa Abu Asad and Ulufer Çelik are joining Greylight Projects for a summer residency, where they will continue developing their work on translation.

After meeting during their studies, Alaa Abu Asad and Ulufer Çelik started compiling lists of shared words in their mother tongues: vernacular Palestinian Arabic and Turkish. The work developed into a publishing project entitled I Love It When Translation Can Be Found To Agree With Our Weird Desires, combining text, drawings, performance and an artistic-pedagogical format used in informal and lively group sessions (from 2019 – ongoing). In their words: “It is a process that can last for good – as long as our friendship lives. We spend time together uttering words that are held in common and draw them, discovering whether they carry the same meaning, are slightly different, or are false friends.”

The work embodies the relational act of translation, what Teju Cole once described as “literary analysis mixed with sympathy, a matter for the brain as well as the heart”. Words in both languages that resemble in meaning and sound offer a spark of recognition, a familiarity through distance, while “false friends”, words that resemble in sound but carry different meanings, are welcomed as a moment of inquiry or enjoyment. One word can lead to many other words, histories, anecdotes, memories, other word-worlds to carry and to be carried across. 

Earlier this year, Alaa and Ulufer were participating artists in trans→actie, a lively co-creation project around multilingualism and translation, organized by Greylight Projects and ISK Emma, an international school for young people who have recently migrated to the Netherlands (and who brought an abundance of languages to the conversation). During their summer residency they will continue expanding this work, welcoming new conversation partners around the wor(l)ds that they have carried with them. @ulufercelik #alaaabuasad