Peace process artistic re-readings
By Dàlia FERRAN for Shared Future News
28 September 2012
Through art there have been several approaches to re-read the conflict and the peace process in Northern Ireland.
On this occasion, the artist Azahara Cerezo installed the two interactive works (“Small print” and “That vicinity”) developed during her residency at Digital Arts Studios and based on the concepts of repetition and difference.
“Small print” deals with translation, re-translation, sense and meaning through English and Gaelic texts, with a four-meter long paper loop and a printer that works whenever a user is detected.
“That vicinity” explores how we look at areas that have been traditionally republican or loyalist and are now increasingly inhabited by other kinds of people: the user triggers a sort of beam scanning that reveals (and also hides) part of a video.
“Small print” consists in translating parts of relevant texts in the Northern Ireland’s history.
Extracts from the Good Friday Agreement, Downing Street Declaration and Tribunal reports about the Bloody Sunday are copied and pasted into Google Translator, which translates it into Gaelic, and then back to English again, back and forth until the final text has a different meaning from the original one, even contrary.
Azahara Cerezo studied visual arts and multimedia in Valencia, and her practice is mainly focused on social changes, social movements, physical and virtual public space, and the links of these elements with power.
