'my miniature Babel': Translation, Territory, and language-landscape #2

Abstract

This presentation discusses language-landscape #2, a 9-minute video artwork that explores whether translation and linguistic borders can be rendered visible through landscape. Drawing on footage filmed across multilingual regions of Belgium and interviews with translators and interpreters working in literary, institutional, legal, and audiovisual contexts, the work examines the relationship between language, territory, and belonging.

The presentation reflects on the artistic methodology behind the work, including the use of moving image, multilingual subtitles, recorded voices, and geographic coordinates as intermedial strategies that challenge the idea of translation as a transparent or fixed process. Through these layered forms of representation, the project explores migration, linguistic identity, and the paradox of borders that possess legal and political force while remaining visually absent.