Posts filed under 'John Pluecker'

In Review: Antìgona González by Sara Uribe

June 6, 2016  |  in Reviews  |  by Laura Ferris

"Both epic poem and annotated bibliography of Latin American Antígonas, Antígona González is a work of excess and heartbreaking silence."

John Pluecker translates the epigraph (from Cristina Rivera Gazra) at the beginning of Antígona González—¿De qué se apropria el que se apropria?—as “What does the appropriator appropriate?” This apparently straightforward translation tellingly reflects the translation strategies he will deploy throughout the book.

This central question echoes a pronounced tendency in Pluecker’s translation: peopling. “The one who appropriates” becomes “the appropriator,” the agent of appropriation. Throughout this translation, subjects becoming into people from more distant Spanish syntax are an artistic and ethical point of return. “They” appears again and again in sentences without subjects, “una habitante de la frontrera” (a [female] resident of the border) becomes “a woman living on the border,” and “todos” unfailing becomes “all of us.”  READ MORE…

Publisher Profile: Antena

September 24, 2015  |  in Interviews, Publisher Profile  |  by Alexis Almeida

"Language justice is difficult to see. The plight of the invisibility of translation is storied."

 

Antena is a language justice and literary experimentation collaborative founded by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker, both writers, artists, literary translators, bookmakers and activist interpreters. Antena activates links between social justice work and artistic practice by exploring how critical views on language can help us to reimagine and rearticulate the worlds we inhabit. Antena has exhibited, published, performed, organized, advocated, translated, curated, interpreted, and/or instigated with numerous groups and institutions, including Blaffer Art Museum, Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics, and Project Row Houses. I recently spoke with Jen Hofer and John Pluecker over email. 

 

Alexis Almeida: I’d like to start with Antena’s beginnings. It seems collaboration is a key element of everything you do. Can you talk a bit about how your different backgrounds/interests were able to coalesce in this project?

John Pluecker: As I’ve described previously in an interview Nancy Wozny did with Antena in 2014 for Arts + Culture TX, “Jen and I initially met in Tijuana, Mexico in 2006 at the Writing Lab on the Border, a six-week series of workshops organized by Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza. Jen’s ideas and thinking about translation, interpretation and writing blew me away from the very start. After our first meeting in Tijuana, we kept running into each other: as interpreters at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the US Social Forum, as literary translators at various gatherings and as poets in readings and events. Over the years, our friendship grew to the point that we decided to join forces.” READ MORE…