How to Read an Image/Text Past a Surpassing Disaster?

Artist Statement

No one has yet shown an interest in translating my published yet forthcoming book The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster (Forthcoming Books, 2009) into Turkish, notwithstanding that in the 1920s and 1930s Turkey exemplified such a withdrawal. Until Selim S. Kuru, at my instigation, translated part of the book into Ottoman, I would have refused any request to translate the book into Turkish, indicating that the book’s translation into Ottoman is a condition of the possibility of its translation into Turkish. Will such a translation into Ottoman contribute to the resurrection of tradition?

Will such a translation of a published yet forthcoming book into an ostensibly past and largely forgotten language prove to be itself forthcoming even after its publication? Under the title How to Read a Text Past a Surpassing Disaster?, the translation forms part of my mixed media work How to Read an Image/Text Past a Surpassing Disaster?, 2010. The other part, titled How to Read an Image Past a Surpassing Disaster?, is composed of six images: five photographs as well as a printout (that includes two photos) of the Ottoman translation of the first paragraph of my book The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster.

2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11