https://jerroldmcgrath.com/artistic-research/2022/10/31/please-dont-understand-this
image submitted by Farrah Seucheran as part of the Toronto, Canada residency (Diaspora)
If we come across writing on a wall in a language we understand, we have no choice but to make sense of it. We do this innately.
If we come across writing on a wall in a language we don’t understand, we can choose to move on, or can try to piece it together given what knowledge we do possess and what we know about the context and place.
If we believe the message is an important one, we might ask others for help, or become irritated that no translation is offered. This is particularly true when we are used to seeing our language and symbols marking the world around us.
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Portion of performance essay submitted by Mohamed Abdelkarim “When there is no sun, Lightning brightens the sky.” (Cairo residency 2021)
The following is excerpted from In Praise of Disorder by Jerrold McGrath (2022)
Beginning in the 1880s and up until the Second World War, migrant workers in the United States created and applied their own secret language, placing markings on civil infrastructure like fences and railway sites to aid one another in finding help or avoiding trouble. Usually, these “hobo” signs would be written in chalk or coal.
Communities and subcultures have long developed their own systems— slang, hand signals, visual images—to communicate outside of official systems.
In 2021, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Toronto and the Canada Council for the Arts, I became curious whether by using local symbolic systems we might enable a fuller picture of technological changes that were underway, providing greater access to conversations about these changes. This project, “Please Don’t Understand This,” draws on theories and rituals to map out new collective sense-making approaches for issues related to artificial intelligence and algorithmic culture.
Malawi is a nation in Southeastern Africa formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia, Tanzania, and Mozambique. The country is nicknamed “the warm heart of Africa” because of the friendliness of its people. Dzaleka is the only permanent refugee camp in Malawi and has a population of approximately 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, and Burundi.
Based in Dzaleka, the Tumaini Festival was founded in 2014 and is a large-scale cultural event created and run by refugees in collaboration with the local community. As part of the 2021 edition, I commissioned artists from the refugee camp and the surrounding community to generate their own visual, symbolic languages to represent their fears about, hopes for, and understanding of artificial intelligence.
Concurrently, in Beijing and Cairo, I commissioned similar inquiries. The overall goal was to involve communities most impacted by artificial intelligence, encouraging them to think and talk about the topic. We also asked the artists to consider how they might let people know that taking or posting a picture could create risks for others and how they could let people know that they were being watched without alerting those doing the watching. The work carried out in Malawi, China, and Egypt was then remixed, without offered context, by members of the Central African, Chinese, and Egyptian diaspora living in Canada.
