Lecture-performance by Slavs and Tatars
Through the lens of phonetic, semantic, and theological slippage, Transliterative Tease explored the potential for transliteration — the conversion of scripts — as a strategy equally of resistance and research into notions such as identity politics, colonialism, and faith. The newest lecture-performance in the artists’ current cycle of work, Transliterative Tease focused on the Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union, as well as the eastern and western frontiers of the Turkic sphere, namely Anatolia and Xinjiang/ Uyghuristan. Lenin believed that the revolution of the east begins with the Latinization of the alphabets of all Muslim subjects of the USSR. The march of alphabets has always accompanied that of empires — Arabic with the rise of Islam, Latin with that of Roman Catholicism, and Cyrillic with the Orthodox Church and subsequently communism. This lecture-performance attempted not to emancipate peoples or nations but rather the sounds rolling off our tongues.