The Personal & the Politics of Language

Gretta Louw reviews Abrahams’ book from estranger to e-stranger: Living in between languages, and finds that not only does it demonstrate a brilliant history in performance art, but, it is also a sharp and poetic critique about language and everyday culture.

The Personal & the Politics of Language: Digital Colonialism & Annie Abrahams’ (E)stranger
Review by Gretta Louw on Furtherfield, 08/03/2016.

from estranger to e-stranger is an almost dadaist, associative, yet powerful interrogation of the accepted wisdoms, the supposed logic of language, and the power structures that it is routinely co-opted into enforcing.

Abrahams’ project is timely, especially now that we are all (supposedly) living in an infinitely connected, post-cultural/post-national, online society, we are literally “living between languages”. The book is an excellent resource, because it is not a coherent, textual presentation of a thesis; of one way of thinking. It is, like the true face of the internet, a collection, a sample, of various thoughts, opinions, ideas, and examples from the past.

Filed under: Articles / Texts, (E)stranger, book, e-stranger, Furtherfield, Gretta Louw, review

from estranger to e-stranger – the book

Annie Abrahams: from estranger to e-stranger
Living in between languages

October 2014
ISBN9781291965117
Editions +++plus+++
www.bram.org
www.cona.si

An (e)stranger is invisible, exotic, unidentifiable, rude, hybrid, 
blurry, deformed, subversive, incomprehensible, complex, pliable, lonely, abject, harder and more fragile at the same time … they are more resilient, more inventive, know how to protect themselves, are good observers, look around a lot, see and ask questions about things that seem to be selfevident …

The book, 98 pages, is available in print on demand (soft cover) for 18 euros (+ postage and tax) via  lulu.com/shop/annie-abrahams/from-estranger-to-e-stranger/paperback/product-21808647.html

You can also download a free .pdf copy of the book lulu.com/shop/annie-abrahams/from-estranger-to-e-stranger/ebook/product-21808727.html

You can also follow this continuing research here e-stranger.tumblr.com

Filed under: Articles / Texts, (E)stranger, +++plus+++, artist book, e-stranger, printed on demand, research

estranger /// e-stranger

hommes traduits – the silent period – minor litterature – bastard language – the postmonolingual – mother and father tongues – een vreemde in eigen land – harder and more fragile – Elternloos / Stiefmoedertaal – all nomads, being a stranger is the status quo – the broken one

PostMono, research, collage, bricolage, assemblage

e-stranger.tumblr.com  From estranger to e-stranger? Maybe a book, 54 posts now.

Filed under: Of interest, (E)stranger, e-stranger, research

Kaj misliš s tem? / What do you mean?

Kaj misliš s tem? / What do you mean?
Public preparation no.1 for an exhibition (Aksioma Oct. 2014)
Thursday, April 17th, 7.30pm,
Kult3000, Metelkova, Ljubljana

A performance and discussion with people who all had to learn a new language because they went living in a country who’s language they didn’t speak.

Performance initiator and preparation : Annie Abrahams. Invited participants : Martina Rusham (dancer and author, Austrian), Jana Wilcoxen (translator, project development, American), Chantal van Mourik (communicator, coordinator, Dutch). Discussion afterwards.

The performance (facilitated by CONA) will last 30 min.
We will not speak directly to one-another, we will type on a computer in our mother-tongue, use google to translate our text in Slovenian and then use text to speech software – TTS by Proteus – to be heard by all in Slovenian.

in the frame of (E)stranger : a 4 weeks residency invited by CONA
partners JSKD, French Institute Ljubljana

Images, etc from the performance: http://e-stranger.tumblr.com/post/83083792701/yesterday-at-kult3000-ljubljana-kaj-mislis-s-tem

Preparations :

Filed under: performance, (E)stranger, CONA, discussion, Kult3000

It is not about the project it is about the relation – Talk

Trubar Litterature House
08 April 2014 19h
Stritarjeva 7
1000 Ljubljana
Tel. : 01 256 56 94

Artist talk : It is not about the project it is about the relation.

Intention: A talk about how relations and behaviour are at the core of my artistic work and about what it means to work on an aesthetics of attention and trust. Using examples of my collective writing and online streaming performances I will try to shed light on the liberating aspects of the human messy sides of interaction in online environments.

Talk in the frame of my 4 weeks residency with CONA and JSKD* in Ljubljana, which will be centered around the notion of being an (E)stranger.

When 12 years old, I went to high school for the first time, I noticed I didn’t speak the same way as the other pupils. I went mute for three days before trying to communicate again. In 1986 I moved from the Netherlands to France and once again I was a ‘stranger’. I was the one who had to learn a new language, who had an accent, who was difficult to understand, the one the others had difficulties paying attention to because she spoke slowly and had bad grammar. I was the ‘broken’ one. But I also was the outsider, the one with distance, the one who didn’t know the rules, and so wasn’t obliged to follow them, the one who could also be free.
So when invited by Cona, to come to Slovenia I decided to go back once more to the position of being a stranger, of creatively playing with this place, of researching its possibilities, beyond it’s handicapping proprieties and make work about that.

notes on the project e-stranger.tumblr.com/

production CONA
partners JSKD, French Institute Ljubljana

Filed under: Conference / lecture, (E)stranger, CONA, Trubar Literature House