11:00 on May 9 (Gladstone Seminar)

Marianna Maruyama explains her Il Milione writing performance that she will present at GEMAK, the Hague between 8 and 10 May 2014.

http://gemak.org/en/2014-03-07/seminar-gladstone

Marianna Maruyama: "In the interest of playing with notions of authorship and collective writing practices, we will copy, by hand, passages from the book 'Il Milione' by Marco Polo. Working with sections of the book that have been translated into the native languages of the selected scribes, and writing on Chinese scrolls with India ink, this will become a collective work by open call. I would like to extend a warm invitation to those who are interested in the work to help copy specifically chosen passages."

"By copying, we can encounter a space where immobility and movement converge. We will cover great distances while sitting still, as we work in the tradition of copying ancient and sacred texts. As inspiration, I also refer to "Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote," the short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Though the fictional Menard "never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original," I anticipate that this transcription will also be something more than pure rote copying."

"Though the seeds of this project were planted in an earlier transcription work in Dordrecht, this expanded edition will be carried out at GEMAK over the course of three days: 8, 9 and 10 April."

Marianna Maruyama (1980, California) is an artist based in the Netherlands. Through writing, audio recording, drawing and play, she looks for ways that sound and movement facilitate an understanding of position. Orientation and voice, specifically loss of position as it relates to loss of voice are dominant themes in her practice. She is currently working in collaboration with Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht, and Werkplaats Typografie as a part of the Dutch Art Institute's Publishing Class IV Community in Print. Most recently, she gave the workshop How to Lose Your Voice as part of the NOA Language School and published the book, Three Movements. In 2012 she exhibited Centers (solo show) at Diginner Gallery, Tokyo, Genius Loci at Klaipėda Culture Communication Center, Lithuania, was an artist-in-residence at the Nida Art Colony, Lithuania, and gave a guest talk at the KaliningradNational Centerfor Contemporary Arts, Kaliningrad, Russia. She holds a BA in Studio Art from Oberlin College (USA) and moved to the Netherlands from Japan.