Since 2016, Fehras Publishing Practices has been conducting a research on translation: “From the outset, language and writing—both fundamental parts of publishing and artistic work— have played an essential role in our practice. (…) We were faced with the following questions: In which language should we write and publish? Who are the readers and viewers of our work? After careful consideration, we decided to publish in both Arabic and English, writing all original texts in Arabic and translating them to English. Meanwhile, problems began to surface. (…) We found ourselves entangled between the two languages. Another concern of ours was form and design: what kind of aesthetics did bilingualism produce?”1
On the occasion of the research residency, co-sponsored by Camargo Foundation, Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur and Goethe Institute, Qalqalah قلقلة wishes to put Fehras’s research — as well as our own collective work on translation — in dialogue with the theoretical tools offered by researcher Tiphaine Samoyault (essayist, translator, literary critic and professor of comparative literature) in Translation and Violence. “What are the possibilities, with translation, of getting out of appropriative hegemony or hospitality tinged with hostility?” she writes. “We must admit that translation is never really right. (…) To consent to the unfair requires the construction of an ethic that knows how to identify what is not just, to recognize it, more than an ethic that strives to be absolutely just without succeeding.”2
The cross-programming, whose title takes a quote from the film Soapy Postmodern Bathwater by Fehras Publishing Practices (2017), allowed for the collective surveying of Tiphaine Samoyault’s work discussed in relation to Fehras’ work and led to the collective writing of a fictional text, a new iteration of the character of Qalqalah.
Detailed program
Tuesday, November 16, 2021:
· 9am – 1pm: First session of the workshop at Villa Arson, Nice. Presentation of the workshop’s frame, individual presentations, collective survey of Translation and Violence by Tiphaine Samoyault.
· 6pm – 8pm: Cross conference of Fehras Publishing Practices and Qalqalah قلقلة (by Victorine Grataloup and Salma Mochtari), Villa Arson, Nice.
Friday, November 19, 2021:
· 1pm – 5pm: Second session of the workshop at Camargo Foundation, Cassis. Collective writing of a fictional short story.
Saturday November 27, 2021:
· 3pm – 5pm: Third session of the workshop at Frac PACA, Marseille. Collective writing of a fictional short story.
· 5pm – 7pm: Screening of the film Soapy Postmodern Bathwater (2017) and roundtable with Fehras Publishing Practices and Tiphaine Samoyault. Moderation: Victorine Grataloup and Salma Mochtari. Simultaneous cross translation: Mathieu Lecarpentier.