HUNG TONGUE by Slavs and Tatars

Slavs and Tatars present in the frame of Scenes of (Un-)translatability their new lecture-performance HUNG TONGUE. HUNG TONGUE explores voice-over translations and what they can tell us about the performativity of language. With a rich history in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, voice-over translation is often referred to as "poor man's dubbing". From action films to audiobooks and news reports, Slavs and Tatars challenges us to rethink notions of respect and disrespect in relation to text, speech and, in particular, speaking about others.

Slavs and Tatars is an internationally renowned art collective devoted to an area East of the former Berlin Wall and West of the Great Wall of China known as Eurasia. Since its inception in 2006, the collective has shown a keen grasp of polemical issues in society, clearing new paths for contemporary discourse via a wholly idiosyncratic form of knowledge production: including popular culture, spiritual and esoteric traditions, oral histories, modern myths, as well as scholarly research. Their work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums across the globe, including the Vienna Secession; MoMA, New York; Salt, Istanbul; Albertinum Dresden, amongst others. The collective’s practice is based on three activities: exhibitions, publications, and lecture-performances. In 2018 they launched a residency and mentorship program and in 2020, Pickle Bar, a Slavic aperitivo bar cum performance space down the road from their studio in Berlin’s Moabit.