Therolinguistic tale, a verse of wormdots and seedlines
During a five-month residency, Maud Gourdon and Chantal van Rijt explored the concepts of coding and decoding. Working with traces of beetles and dried seeds they attempted to decipher messages of tunnels, holes and dots. In the exhibition, Maud and Chantal consider plants and animals as our linguistic equals as they search for ways to translate their hidden and discarded language.
The act of translation is defined by a back-and-forth movement of contraction and expansion, where it is crucial to go back to the root of a word and/or summon a list of synonyms to approach its specific meaning. By playing with the density of language the artists free it from specific meaning and let patterns appear. In doing so, the poetry
of a worm and a seed is revealed. The artists challenge ways to conceive language – human or nonhuman – as well as the communication that occurs in between.
During a five-month residency, Maud Gourdon and Chantal van Rijt explored the concepts of coding and decoding. Working with traces of beetles and dried seeds they attempted to decipher messages of tunnels, holes and dots. In the exhibition, Maud and Chantal consider plants and animals as our linguistic equals as they search for ways to translate their hidden and discarded language.
The act of translation is defined by a back-and-forth movement of contraction and expansion, where it is crucial to go back to the root of a word and/or summon a list of synonyms to approach its specific meaning. By playing with the density of language the artists free it from specific meaning and let patterns appear. In doing so, the poetry
of a worm and a seed is revealed. The artists challenge ways to conceive language – human or nonhuman – as well as the communication that occurs in between.
Duo exhibition Maud Gourdon & Chantal van Rijt
Part of M-Residency Museum M Leuven
Cas-Co, Leuven
Part of M-Residency Museum M Leuven
Cas-Co, Leuven