MEIR LOBATON CORONA

It is not Babel's fault

location: Mexico City, Mexico

type: Text interventions

description: Freedom of expression generates freedom of understanding, what for some is white, for others is black; what often seems a harmless act can be a strong aggression.

We have learned to speak between the lines, and have forgotten to speak openly. Every day, it is more difficult to find the hidden sense of things; each one writes what he wants; reads what he wants, and understands what he wants to understand.

The interpretation, the manipulation of information and the dual message have become a daily practice in the media as well as in the street.

Probably, the easiest way to transmit such notion is the use of idiomatic barriers as work tools, but the real culprits are the social, economic and cultural differences, and not the language itself. It is not Babel’s fault.

This project consists of a series of phrases written in black ink without spaces, which in turn create a word in a different language, underlined in red. The content of the phrases and the underlined words are antagonist. That allows each text to have two different interpretations depending of the language with which they are read.

It is worth noting that this project suggests leaving the walls of galleries and museums to use editorial means as a support, justification and diffusion of the work. To use the advertising spaces in magazines as itinerant galleries and museums, allows us to make sure that our proposals reach a greater number of people and therefore will have a grater impact on the community.