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For the final chapter of Slavs and Tatars third cycle of work, The Faculty of Substitution, we are currently pursuing two avenues of research: language politics- particularly Turkic languages and their graphic and oral vicissitudes over the past century- and a genre of literature called 'mirrors for princes' (or speculum principum / fürstenspiegel).

 

Long Legged Linguistics presents a deliberately sensual, if not kinky, approach to language as a tool of political and corporal resistance, while Mirrors for Princes presents the science of statecraft through the elevated mysticism of the tongue. While the former celebrates the wagging, swaggering tongues of the vernacular, the latter presses its hallowed words into historical script, making for a decidedly linguistic dialectic-together reminiscent of the classic trope of the Mother and the Whore.

 

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Long Legged Linguistics

 

Our recent exhibitions (Beyonsense,MoMA, Khhhhhhh,Moravian Gallery, Brno, Behind Reason, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Long Legged Linguistics at Art Space Pythagorion, Samos) and publication Khhhhhhh (Mousse/Moravian Gallery 2012) looked at the throat, often eclipsed by the tongue for its ability to convey not just profane sounds but also sacred meaning.

 

In Long Legged Linguistics, we explore alphabet politics and specific letters through experiences of orality, sensuality and hospitality. Many of the more compelling cases concern Turkic languages and Muslims, both in Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia, where the grunt force of language politics took its toll amidst at least three-if not more-changes to alphabets within the 20th century alone.

 

The march of alphabets has always accompanied that of empires and religions: Latin script along with the Roman Catholic faith, Arabic with Islam and the Caliphate-not to mention Cyrillic with Orthodox Christianity and subsequently the USSR. Yet here, it is not peoples or nations that are liberated, but phonemes from attempts to restrain and rein them in.

 

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Mirrors for Princes

 

A form of political writing from the Middle Ages, but also with notable examples in the 16-19th centuries,  "mirrors for princes" attempted to elevate statecraft (dawla) to the same level as faith/religion (din).  At a time when the overwhelming majority of scholarship was devoted to religious affairs, these texts carved out a space for statecraft. Today, we suffer from the very opposite: a secular rage to know it all.

 

Often called advice literature, these guides for future rulers appeared in both Muslim and Christian lands (Machiavelli's The Prince is the most widely known example). Nowadays, there's no shortage of political commentators around, but a notable lack of intelligent, eloquent discourse on the role of faith, the immaterial, or what Rudolf Otto would call "the holy other," in public life.  The genre further skewers contemporary society's incontinent interest in self-help books: Instead of How to Marry a Millionaire or How to Lose 15 Pounds in 15 Days, the mirrors offered instruction, aphorisms, and reflections on how to rule a nation, from economics to etiquette, astrology to agriculture.

 

 

Works-2014-2015

 

For various engagements throughout 2014-15, including the recent Neighbors exhibition at the Istanbul Modern and Lektor at the Kunsthalle in Zurich (see below), we have produced an audio piece using excerpts from Kutadgu Bilig (literally, the wisdom that brings happiness) wherein language and its organs-the tongue, nose, throat, ear, lips-play a leading role.

 

 

Written in the 11th century in Kashgar-in what is now known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China-Yusuf Khass Hajib's Kutadgu Bilig is one of the more literary mirrors for princes. Written in rhymed couplets (masnavi), four main characters personify four abstract principals-Justice, Fortune, Intellect, and Contentment. Their debates serve as a rare example of Socratic dialogue in a Muslim tradition known for its theological emphasis on the One, on unicity.

 

Addressing the delicate balance between seclusion and society, and spirit and state, Kutadgu Bilig aimed to put Turkic ideas of governance and literature on an equal footing with its counterparts in the Arabic and Persian traditions. This is, interestingly enough, an obverse if similar gesture to Atatürk's Romanization and dil devrimi (language revolution). Kutadgu Bilig's importance is difficult to over-state: it is to Turkish what Ferdowsi's Shahnameh is to Persian, Beowulf to English, or even The Iliad is to Greek.

 

For the audio piece Lektor, excerpts from Kutadgu Bilig are recorded in the original Uighur with a voice-over or 'dub' in the local vernacular, depending on the venue of exhibition (Turkish in Istanbul, German in Zurich). The delivery of a near-monotonous, matter-of-fact voiceover stems from a translation practice called "Gavrilov's translation" often used in Poland and Russia. The original language is kept audible, almost equally so, to the destination language. The simultaneous playback of two distinct audio tracks makes for a disruptive experience, touching on issues of legibility to authenticity (the method is often used for news segments and documentaries).

 

 

The Istanbul iteration of this audio piece was accompanied by Nose Twister, a seating arrangement and paean to the phonetic omissions occurring during the "catastrophically successful" alphabet change in early Republican Turkey. When no corresponding letter in the Roman alphabet could be found for the nasal "ng" (ڭ)-this letter, and sound, was simply dropped from the language-though still found in parts of Anatolia and in Uighur.

 

 

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Research

 

Field research in Istanbul and Xinjiang (or, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region) has addressed both strands of investigation. We have delved into the linguistic fields of Turkic studies since Uighur is considered to be the oldest or 'original' of the Turkish-based languages, not to mention the only nationally recognized Turkic language to still be written with an Arab script.

 

Further library and archival research into the bibliographic history of Kutadgu Bilig-a text that has been translated and transcribed in many more alphabets than the four (Cyrillic, Latin, Arabic and Chinese) Uighur language is already written in-has revealed something of a funhouse mirror, if you will, of all the sides to this compelling narrative.

 

For centuries the easternmost frontier of Islam, Xinjiang's proximity to other long-standing faiths (Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism) resulted in a certain conceptual flexibility and permissiveness, while the prohibition of faith altogether under Soviet rule inadvertently preserved its progressive, communitarian practice.

 

Our interest lies in those cases where complexity reigns, where multiple identities come to form a compelling case for shades of grey eclipsed by the black and whites of politics and received wisdom. Xinjiang offers one of the only examples where the two major ideological narratives of the past and present century-Communism and Islam, respectively-collide without the mediation of the West. For China, Islam comes from the west-not the east as it does for much of the western world. Yet it serves as an urgent precedent for pluralism in China's rise to global eminence.

About the artist

Slavs and Tatars is a faction of polemics and intimacies devoted to an area east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. The collective's work spans several media, disciplines, and a broad spectrum of cultural registers (high and low) focusing on an oft-forgotten sphere of influence between Slavs, Caucasians and Central Asians.


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