MOMENT
Deutsche Bank
image:
ratislav is giving his word for wordsearch, © photo: franziska
lamprecht, hajoe moderegger, new york city, deutsche bank art, frankfurt
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Karin Sander: wordsearch
MOMENT Deutsche Bank
http://www.moment-art.com
http://www.deutsche-bank-art.co
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What language does New York speak?
It will be appearing in the Business Day Section of The New York
Times on
October 4 and is available in print on the same day in both Frankfurt
and
New York: wordsearch, Karin Sander's art work for the Deutsche Bank's
art
series Moment. The wordsearch catalogue will be appearing tomorrow,
September 29, as a supplement to the New York Times Magazine.
Get your copy of the wordsearch catalogue tomorrow, and The New York
Times
with Karin Sander's art work on October 4. Or order them both over the
wordsearch website at http://www.moment-art.com.
A one-day work of art? In the business section of The New York
Times?
Karin Sander's wordsearch uses the power of the newspaper as a
medium-and
also reproduces is temporary nature.
Many readers might ask: why go searching for words in a city that still
bears the scars of last September's terrorist attacks? But Karin
Sander's
art project, which was planned in 2000, is precisely a sensitive
seismograph of New York city's present state of mind. Sander asked 250
New
Yorkers, each speaking a different language, to donate a word in their
mother tongue to the project-a word that has a special personal
significance for them. And those New Yorkers, representing a wide range
of
ethnic backgrounds and nationalities, went ahead and gave their word,
making their own special contribution to reshaping the city's wounded
skyline. For the words they have donated go to make up the living image
of
a city looking confidently into the future.
Each of the words has now been translated into every one of the other
249
languages in the project. In dealing with languages as far apart as
Efik,
Patois, Malayalam, Chickasaw and Sulawesi, the translators have had to
ask
for assistance from all over the globe. A total of 62,500 words has thus
been generated, from which Karin Sander has fashioned a work of art
analogous to the stock market listings in the business section of The
New
York Times. "The visual impression," says Sander, "will be very similar,
and yet the pages will seem strange and unfamiliar. Numbers will be
replaced by words whose contextual status is at first sight unclear."
The
stock market listings-those condensed representations of the day's
economic trends-are familiar to most newspaper readers. The words culled
from these languages, however, are an expression of our age's cultural
identity. Thus wordsearch not only creates an unusual portrait of this
multicultural metropolis but also proposes an alternative set of values
that reaches beyond economic considerations-opposing to the dry
mathematics of share prices the universal culture of words.
Frozen in print for a single day-October 4-wordsearch will be
experienced
by millions of New York Times readers around the world. On that Friday,
this traditional information medium and modern communications technology
will combine forces: the newspaper will be transmitted word for word by
satellite from New York to Frankfurt, where it will be printed out, some
copies being dispatched to London. For wordsearch is both a
high-circulation mass media event and a collector's item that can be
purchased for just 75 cents. The catalog of the project also uses the
range and power of this printed medium: Appearing tomorrow, sunday, this
catalog will be published as a 68-page insert in The New York
Times
magazine. It will provide background information on the project, to
include an interview with the artist, portraits of the word donors, and
in-depth analyses by American and European authors. On the following
Friday, October 4, wordsearch itself will present the rich variety of
languages, traditions, myths and visions that go to make up New York
City,
at the same time creating a locale where people from a wide range of
cultures can come together. For culture has a lot to do with
identity-most
especially perhaps in an international bank. That is why fostering
cultural acceptance will always remain a central focus of our commitment
to art.
More information at http://www.moment-art.com or
http://www.deutsche-bank-art.co
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