Lecture: Martin Waldmeier – Speaking in Tongues


Tuesday 15 November, 6.00 – 7.00pm, Lecture Room, IMMA

Image: Luis Camnitzer, Insults, 2009, installation at MARCO Vigo. Photo courtesy MARCO Vigo

Why do so many in the art world speak such an opaque and impenetrable jargon? In a non-academic lecture, Martin Waldmeier, research & teaching fellow in the Art in the Contemporary World MA programme at NCAD and resident curator at IMMA, will take this question as a starting point to discuss the complex role of language in contemporary art, the Babel problem and the fascinating history of world languages, and the power of language to invent the world and make ourselves at home in it.

Further Information

This talk draws on Waldmeier’s current course in the Art in the Contemporary World. M.A./M.F.A. programme at NCAD, titled Lingua Franca, exploring how artists and exhibition-makers imagine and communicate with their audiences in a time of cultural globalisation, to what extent art needs language, and how we could imagine a different language of art.

Martin is a curator and researcher of contemporary art, working on the intersections between art, language and globalisation. Martin recently completed his Ph.D. in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths (University of London), titled The Artist as Translator. His recent travelling exhibition, The Translator’s Voice, explored language identity in the global present and was awarded the FRAC Lorraine/MARCO Vigo/SFKM Førde Award for Young Curators. Previously, Martin studied Modern and Contemporary Art History and Curatorial Studies at the University of Bern (Switzerland), and Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as Fulbright Scholar. Between 2009 and 2011 he worked as the Assistant Curator at PROGR Centre for Cultural Production, Bern, and as the Curator and Director of Stadtgalerie, Bern.

Programmed in association with Art in the Contemporary World, M.A./M.F.A – NCAD.

Booking Line/ http://www.imma.ie/en/page_237185.htm