Multilingual Approaches to Intermedial Intertextual and Direct Reference in Visual and Installation Art

Principle Investigator：Dean Brink

This project explores how differences in language norms affect how we approach visual art, including interactive and installation art. While art is usually presented with titles and comments in the local languages, often such information is presented in English, French, Japanese, or other languages perceived to add status, in John Searle’s sense of using language to attribute status to something. Sometimes the artwork itself foregrounds language, as in conceptual and pop art incorporating slogans, brand names, and fashion discourse. While acknowledging the historical roles for how language implicates meaning in sociolinguistic contexts and is inflected in conceptual art, the methodology is closer to postcolonial world philosophy, foregrounding the language of the local. Conceptual and traditional art’s dependency on titles, especially prominent from the 1950s and increasingly so to the present, suggests that the language(s) used in the titles as well as within artworks be placed as integral to questions concerning the roles visual arts play in societies and communities. The project aims to present its findings in a documentary video as well as in presentations and publications.