Alejandro Cesarco : Learning the Language (Present Continuous I)
This third sequence in the NEWSPEAK_ cycle is a
response to the A vocabulary in George Orwell’s novel
1984, the category of language that covers the lexical field
of everyday life in ordinary language. The words are
unambiguous, unnuanced and short; they express one
and only one concept, each with a staccato rhythm.
Alejandro Cesarco’s exhibition presents an alternative to
that particular “newspeak”.
Learning the Language (Present Continuous I) suggests
possible connections between writing and music through
a video portrait of the nonagenarian Argentine pianist
Margarita Fernández. The film is one of a series of video
portraits in which the artist borrows the vocabulary of his
protagonists to formulate problems that run through his
own work (memory, repetition, and regrets, for example).
For Cesarco it is a continuation of his research on
narrative structures and translation. Here he focuses on
back and forth and possible transpositions – from music
to film, from film to music, and so on. Language has
become a matter of motifs, refrains and combinations,
structured like a musical ensemble.
Satellite Programme 2018 : NOVLANGUE_
Curator : Agnès Violeau