Live Translation

Performance

2018

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The performance involves the audience selecting either a Dominican song or an Italian song from a pre-established playlist. Then, as I listened to the lyrics, I type the translations from either Italian or Spanish to English, onto a document right in the moment. This performance is a frantic attempt at sharing the complexities of growing up multilingual and with diversity in my home and the difficulty in trying to explain my interculturality and the complexities of thinking in three languages. The audience's involvement is to reflect the constant demands I feel at figuring out who I am and how to make others aware of it. Yet this process is not a negative one. I chose a wide range of genres and themes within the music, many of which audiences might recognize, as I don't think the process of unravelling and discussing identity and culture should feel inaccessible or distancing.