“Arrested flight” of Phoenix : Translaboration in art production as (co-)translation

1.Introduction

As Zwischenberger (2017Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. , 388) observes, translation “has travelled to numerous disciplines in recent years.” It is true that, as a burgeoning “paradigm for innovation and transformation” (Perteghella 2019Perteghella, Manuela 2019 “The Case of the Poem in Motion: Translation, Movement and the Poetic Landscape.” In Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders, edited by Madeleine Campbell and Ricarda Vidal, 63–85. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Perteghella, Manuela 2019 “The Case of the Poem in Motion: Translation, Movement and the Poetic Landscape.” In Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders, edited by Madeleine Campbell and Ricarda Vidal, 63–85. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. , 63), translation has lent itself to academic explorations in Translation Studies’ neighboring disciplines and fields of research. Turning their attention to artistic production, scholars have utilized the translation concept to examine the representation of reality through various art forms (Boria et al. 2019Boria, Monica, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin eds. 2019 Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words. Abingdon: Routledge. Boria, Monica, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin eds. 2019 Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words. Abingdon: Routledge. ; Campbell and Vidal 2019Campbell, Madeleine, and Ricarda Vidal eds. 2019 Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Campbell, Madeleine, and Ricarda Vidal eds. 2019 Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ; Ott and Weber 2019Ott, Michaela, and Thomas Weber eds. 2019 Situated in Translations: Cultural Communities and Media Practices. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.Ott, Michaela, and Thomas Weber eds. 2019 Situated in Translations: Cultural Communities and Media Practices. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.; De Francisci and Marinetti 2025De Francisci, Enza, and Cristina Marinetti eds. 2025 Translation in the Performing Arts: Embodiment, Materiality, and Inclusion. New York: Routledge. De Francisci, Enza, and Cristina Marinetti eds. 2025 Translation in the Performing Arts: Embodiment, Materiality, and Inclusion. New York: Routledge. ), such as painting, photography, dance, music, and media art. In light of this, Vidal Claramonte (2022)Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. creates the neologism ‘artistranslator’ to describe artists who ‘translate’ the world/real with contemporary art in all its forms. In her view, their translating, above all, is the result of their way of seeing, understanding, and rewriting the world/real (50).

Inspired by the wide use of translation as a “travelling concept” (Bal 2002Bal, Mieke 2002 Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Bal, Mieke 2002 Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide. Toronto: University of Toronto Press., 2009Bal, Mieke 2009 “Working with Concepts.” European Journal of English Studies 13 (1): 13–23. Bal, Mieke 2009 “Working with Concepts.” European Journal of English Studies 13 (1): 13–23. ), a group of transdisciplinary researchers at the University of Westminster coined the blended concept of ‘translaboration’ as a “generic space” (Fauconnier and Turner 1998Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner 1998 “Conceptual Integration Networks.” Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal 22 (2): 133–187. Fauconnier, Gilles, and Mark Turner 1998 “Conceptual Integration Networks.” Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal 22 (2): 133–187. ) that “bring[s] translation and collaboration into open conceptual play with one another” (Alfer 2017Alfer, Alexa 2017 “Entering the Translab: Translation as Collaboration, Collaboration as Translation, and the Third Space of ‘Translaboration’.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 275–290.Alfer, Alexa 2017 “Entering the Translab: Translation as Collaboration, Collaboration as Translation, and the Third Space of ‘Translaboration’.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 275–290., 275). The key tenet of ‘translaboration’ is its view of translation as collaboration and vice versa. It aims to construct a transdisciplinary space for exploring the conceptual or practical confluence of collaboration and translation, particularly for investigating how translation can provide metaphorical models for movements of ideas or objects across disciplines and fields (Alfer 2015Alfer, Alexa 2015 “Transcending Boundaries.” The Linguist 54 (5): 26–27.Alfer, Alexa 2015 “Transcending Boundaries.” The Linguist 54 (5): 26–27.). It is based on this tenet that artistic production is considered through the lens of translation in the current study.

徐冰 Xu Bing (1955–) is a prominent figure in contemporary Chinese art, internationally renowned for his creative explorations of language, text, and semiosis. He has constantly made “artistic attempts to replace linguistic translation by icon(ic) transcription” (Mersmann 2019Mersmann, Birgit 2019 “Case Studies of Global Transference: Language, Media and Culture Translation in Xu Bing’s Writing-Art.” Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo 6 (1): 53–75. Mersmann, Birgit 2019 “Case Studies of Global Transference: Language, Media and Culture Translation in Xu Bing’s Writing-Art.” Revista de Estudios Globales y Arte Contemporáneo 6 (1): 53–75. , 54) and, understandably, attracted increasing scholarly attention in Translation Studies (Bruno 2012Bruno, Cosima 2012 “Words by the Look: Issues in Translating Chinese Visual Poetry.” In China and Its Others: Knowledge Transfer through Translation, 1829–2010, edited by James St. André and Hsiao-yen Peng, 245–276. Leiden: Brill. Bruno, Cosima 2012 “Words by the Look: Issues in Translating Chinese Visual Poetry.” In China and Its Others: Knowledge Transfer through Translation, 1829–2010, edited by James St. André and Hsiao-yen Peng, 245–276. Leiden: Brill. ; Lee 2014bLee, Tong King 2014b “Visuality and Translation in Contemporary Chinese Literary Art: Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky and A Book from the Ground .” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 1 (1): 43–62. Lee, Tong King 2014b “Visuality and Translation in Contemporary Chinese Literary Art: Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky and A Book from the Ground.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 1 (1): 43–62. , 2015Lee, Tong King 2015 Experimental Chinese Literature: Translation, Technology, Poetics. Leiden: Brill. Lee, Tong King 2015 Experimental Chinese Literature: Translation, Technology, Poetics. Leiden: Brill. ; Vidal Claramonte and Lee 2024Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África, and Tong King Lee 2024 Hypertranslation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África, and Tong King Lee 2024 Hypertranslation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). His well-researched seminal works, among others, include Book from the Sky (Xu 1988Xu, Bing 1988 Book from the Sky. Installation. National Art Museum of China, Beijing.Xu, Bing 1988 Book from the Sky. Installation. National Art Museum of China, Beijing.), a floor-to-ceiling installation comprised of printed volumes and scrolls inscribed with thousands of pseudo-Chinese characters invented by the artist, and Book from the Ground (Xu 2012Xu, Bing 2012 Book from the Ground: From Point to Point. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press.Xu, Bing 2012 Book from the Ground: From Point to Point. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Press.), a graphic novel written entirely in pictograms. Both works showcase his active engagement with experimental forms of language and translation: the former is made ‘untranslatable’ (i.e., incomprehensible) even to the Chinese audience, while the latter can be universally ‘translated’ in the sense of “intersemiotic translation” (Jakobson 1959Jakobson, Roman 1959 “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, edited by Reuben Arthur Brower, 232–239. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Jakobson, Roman 1959 “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In On Translation, edited by Reuben Arthur Brower, 232–239. Cambridge: Harvard University Press., 233).

This study is a further inquiry into Xu’s translational thinking, arguing that Xu is what Vidal Claramonte (2022)Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. calls an ‘artistranslator’ who acutely attends to and deals with social realities. His large-scale installation Phoenix (Xu 2010Xu, Bing. 2010 Phoenix. Installation. Today Art Museum, Beijing.Xu, Bing. 2010 Phoenix. Installation. Today Art Museum, Beijing.), which foregrounds the labor–capital intertwinedness in the process of China’s urbanization, is a case in point. Notably, in the production of the artwork, translaboration has been instrumental both conceptually and as a practice since multiple human stakeholders and non-human elements play their part. Therefore, this study construes Phoenix as an artistic translation of particular social realities perceived by Xu and interrogates how Xu performs his subjectivity in such a translation. This is followed by a discussion of his translaboration with different human and non-human actors who partake in the production process and thus make it a co-translation, during which Xu’s subjectivity is both stimulated and confined by others.

2.Translaboration in artistic production and/as translation

Although the “constant indefinition” of translation (Vidal Claramonte 2022Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. , 14) is considered promising for its interdisciplinarity, some scholars also comment on the potential erosion of the translation concept by its fuzzy, loose, and purely metaphorical uses (Bachmann-Medick 2009Bachmann-Medick, Doris 2009 “Introduction: The Translational Turn.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16. Bachmann-Medick, Doris 2009 “Introduction: The Translational Turn.” Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16. ; Zwischenberger 2017Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. , 2020Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2020 “Translaboration: Exploring Collaboration in Translation and Translation in Collaboration.” Target 32 (2): 173–190. Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2020 “Translaboration: Exploring Collaboration in Translation and Translation in Collaboration.” Target 32 (2): 173–190. ; Tomalin 2019Tomalin, Marcus 2019 “The Multimodal Dimensions of Literature in Translation.” In Translation and Multimodality, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 134–157. Abingdon: Routledge. Tomalin, Marcus 2019 “The Multimodal Dimensions of Literature in Translation.” In Translation and Multimodality, edited by Monica Boria, Ángeles Carreres, María Noriega-Sánchez, and Marcus Tomalin, 134–157. Abingdon: Routledge. ). This dual condition is also manifested in the conception of art. As the Polish art historian Tatarkiewicz (1971Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. , 146) noted, the ancients were in no doubt as to what they meant by art, whereas “our century [the twentieth century, marked by the rise of material culture and the communication media that extended the scope of ‘art’] came to the conclusion that a comprehensive definition of ‘art’ is not only very difficult, but impossible to achieve.” Nowadays, what we call art is all the more manifold and pervasive, with contemporary art “becom[ing] — in its forms and its contents, its meanings and its usages — […] extremely wide-ranging in its modes of asking and in the scope of its inquiries” (Smith 2009Smith, Terry 2009 What is Contemporary Art? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Terry 2009 What is Contemporary Art? Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , 2). Thus, as an “open concept” (Weitz 1956Weitz, Morris 1956 “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1): 27–35. Weitz, Morris 1956 “The Role of Theory in Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1): 27–35. , 32), art is perpetually and profoundly de/re-constructed, to be sure, but it is at risk of being so all-inclusive as to be meaningless. The affinity between translation and art in terms of their conceptual expansion and (potential) dissolution leads to the inference that it may be beneficial to bring both concepts into a shared translaborative space for mutual inspection and refinement with each other’s unique perspective.

Zwischenberger (2017)Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. Zwischenberger, Cornelia 2017 “Translation as a Metaphoric Traveller across Disciplines. Wanted: Translaboration!” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 388–406. examines the translational turn outside of Translation Studies, in particular, the deployment of translation as a travelling concept in cultural studies, organization studies, and sociology, so as to advocate for a translaboration between Translation Studies and its various neighboring disciplines. Based on such a translaboration, as she presumes, “translation studies can help co-construct the translational turn that has evidently not completely unfolded yet” and, in turn, “a conceptually and methodologically refined translation concept could ultimately travel back to and thus advance translation studies” (403). This statement identifies the most fundamental and impactful role that the idea of translaboration could play in contributing to the field of research, namely the reciprocal, back-and-forth transdisciplinary engagement it engenders. In this sense, translaboration between art and translation prompts us to probe into both the artistic nature of translation (i.e., translation as art, as explored by, among others, Saldanha [2022]Saldanha, Gabriela 2022 “From Voice to Performance: The Artistic Agency of Literary Translators.” In Unsettling Translation: Studies in Honour of Theo Hermans, edited by Mona Baker, 97–111. Abingdon: Routledge. Saldanha, Gabriela 2022 “From Voice to Performance: The Artistic Agency of Literary Translators.” In Unsettling Translation: Studies in Honour of Theo Hermans, edited by Mona Baker, 97–111. Abingdon: Routledge. ) and the translational dimension of artwork (i.e., art as translation, which is the premise of the current study). This again points to how translaboration suggests a way of redefining art in translational terms. In fact, a historic definition of art, present in both ancient and modern discourse, is that “it represents, or reproduces, reality”11.Nevertheless, as Tatarkiewicz (1971Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. , 148) noted, “art as imitation or representation is only a partial definition, not a definition of art in its entirety.” See Tatarkiewicz’s (1971)Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. study for his own comprehensive, ‘disjunctive’ definition of art as well as a historical overview of the European concept of art. (Tatarkiewicz 1971Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw 1971 “What Is Art? The Problem of Definition Today.” The British Journal of Aesthetics 11 (2): 134–153. , 141), which is reminiscent of the frequently unquestioned use of translation as synonymous with ‘representation’ of the original. From the translaborative perspective, however, translation is no longer what Translation Studies predominantly conceives of as a unidirectional ‘representation’ of the original, but a bi-directional, interactive, and mutually enriching process where the original and the translation co-construct meaning. Then, if “art represents reality” is rephrased as “art translates reality,” art is able to engage with reality more reciprocally and move beyond a merely representational, or mimetic, function. To be specific, in the case of the artistranslator, a certain reality as the original not only shapes but is also (re)shaped by the translation (i.e., the artwork), and their interplay may persist through the act of retranslation and/or the audience’s ongoing interpretation. Moreover, translation, according to Cordingley and Frigau Manning (2017Cordingley, Anthony, and Cèline Frigau Manning 2017 “What is Collaborative Translation?” In Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age, edited by Anthony Cordingley and Cèline Frigau Manning, 1–30. London: Bloomsbury.Cordingley, Anthony, and Cèline Frigau Manning 2017 “What is Collaborative Translation?” In Collaborative Translation: From the Renaissance to the Digital Age, edited by Anthony Cordingley and Cèline Frigau Manning, 1–30. London: Bloomsbury., 22), is “singularly plural and plurally singular,” namely an intrinsically collaborative undertaking, which means that the original constitutes one of the multiple human and non-human collaborators that participate in the translational/artistic production. In other words, by equating artistic creation with translation, the translaborative view ensures that the collaborative dimension of art production can be brought to the forefront.

Unsurprisingly, the emerging concept of translaboration has provided fertile ground for researchers to explore the possibilities of (re)framing translation products and processes from a collaborative and transdisciplinary perspective and generated diverse applications. Although interlingual translation as translation proper has still maintained its dominance over the conceptualization of translation in the literature on translaboration (Cranfield and Tedesco 2017Cranfield, Steven, and Claudio Tedesco 2017 “Reformulating the Problem of Translatability: A Case of Literary Translaboration with the Poetry of Francisco Brines.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 304–322. Cranfield, Steven, and Claudio Tedesco 2017 “Reformulating the Problem of Translatability: A Case of Literary Translaboration with the Poetry of Francisco Brines.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 304–322. ; Saadat 2017Saadat, Shabnam 2017 “Translaboration: Collaborative Translation to Challenge Hegemony.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 349–369. Saadat, Shabnam 2017 “Translaboration: Collaborative Translation to Challenge Hegemony.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 349–369. ; Heller and Hawkins 2020Heller, Lavinia, and Spencer Hawkins 2020 “Translaboration as Legitimation of Philosophical Translation.” Target 32 (2): 239–260. Heller, Lavinia, and Spencer Hawkins 2020 “Translaboration as Legitimation of Philosophical Translation.” Target 32 (2): 239–260. ; Zanotti 2020Zanotti, Serenella 2020 “Translaboration in a Film Context: Stanley Kubrick’s Collaborative Approach to Translation.” Target 32 (2): 217–238. Zanotti, Serenella 2020 “Translaboration in a Film Context: Stanley Kubrick’s Collaborative Approach to Translation.” Target 32 (2): 217–238. ; Sarıgül 2023Sarıgül, Semih 2023 “Online Translaboration in Video Game Localization: The Case of the Steam Translation Server in Turkey.” In Translaboration in Analogue and Digital Practice: Labour, Power, Ethics, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Alexa Alfer, 53–80. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Sarıgül, Semih 2023 “Online Translaboration in Video Game Localization: The Case of the Steam Translation Server in Turkey.” In Translaboration in Analogue and Digital Practice: Labour, Power, Ethics, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Alexa Alfer, 53–80. Berlin: Frank & Timme. ), translaboration has also been approached in relation to artistic production as a form of translation. Mersmann (2020Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. , 192), for example, investigates documentary photography as a collaborative practice of what she terms ‘photo-translation’, which relates to “the visual transmittance of migrants’ living world experiences by means of photography.” Similarly, Karunanayake and Perera (2023)Karunanayake, Dinithi, and Ruhanie Perera 2023 “Memory as Method, Translaboration as Practice: The Collaborative Translation Process of The A to Z of Conflict .” In Translaboration in Analogue and Digital Practice: Labour, Power, Ethics, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Alexa Alfer, 161–184. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Karunanayake, Dinithi, and Ruhanie Perera 2023 “Memory as Method, Translaboration as Practice: The Collaborative Translation Process of The A to Z of Conflict.” In Translaboration in Analogue and Digital Practice: Labour, Power, Ethics, edited by Cornelia Zwischenberger and Alexa Alfer, 161–184. Berlin: Frank & Timme. offer an autoethnographic study of how the contributors to the art book project The A to Z of Conflict (Cheran et al. 2019Cheran, Rudhramoorthy, Dinithi Karunanayake, Sharmini Pereira, Ruhanie Perera, T. Shanathanan, and Geetha Sukumaran eds. 2019 The A to Z of Conflict. Colombo: Raking Leaves.Cheran, Rudhramoorthy, Dinithi Karunanayake, Sharmini Pereira, Ruhanie Perera, T. Shanathanan, and Geetha Sukumaran eds. 2019 The A to Z of Conflict. Colombo: Raking Leaves.) translate between words and images expressing the creators’ lived experience of conflict in Sri Lanka. In addition, Kathrani (2017)Kathrani, Paresh 2017 “ ‘Kandinsky-fying’ the Law: A Translaborative Use of Abstract Art in the Law Classroom.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 370–387. Kathrani, Paresh 2017 “ ‘Kandinsky-fying’ the Law: A Translaborative Use of Abstract Art in the Law Classroom.” Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 3 (3): 370–387. analyzes collaborative intersemiotic translation of legal terms into abstract art (by drawing on points, lines, shapes, and colors) as an efficacious pedagogic tool that he posits could engender a translaborative space for law students and their tutors and peers to map the legal ecosystem. These studies perceive artistic production as translation (of migrant, conflict, and legal realities, for instance) and concentrate on the collaborative nature of such translation.

However, collaboration between human actors remains the focus of the above translaborative research, while non-human actors are relatively understudied as an autonomous agent. Nevertheless, in Mersmann’s (2020Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. , 207) study, moving objects (e.g., a piece of wood of a fishing boat representing the story of refugees smuggled to Lampedusa) depicted by a photo-graphic novel are recognized as non-human actors with narrative agency that are “included in the translational actor-network approach to studying the production and circulation of migration images.” Given its central concern with non-humans as actors equal to humans, actor-network theory has informed translation research that avoids the anthropocentric interpretation of translation and/or collaboration by considering non-humans alongside humans (e.g., Luo 2020Luo, Wenyan 2020 Translation as Actor-Networking: Actors, Agencies, and Networks in the Making of Arthur Waley’s English Translation of the Chinese ‘Journey to the West’. New York: Routledge. Luo, Wenyan 2020 Translation as Actor-Networking: Actors, Agencies, and Networks in the Making of Arthur Waley’s English Translation of the Chinese ‘Journey to the West’. New York: Routledge. ; Lee 2023Lee, Tong King 2023 “Distribution and Translation.” Applied Linguistics Review 14 (2): 369–390. Lee, Tong King 2023 “Distribution and Translation.” Applied Linguistics Review 14 (2): 369–390. ). As Mersmann (2020Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. , 208; my emphasis) contends, “providing voices to the wide variety of human and non-human agents uncovers the multiplicity and diversity of translational agency, usually hidden behind the final product of translations.” In line with this observation, this study, through the case of Phoenix, attempts to contribute a new discussion of translaboration by giving special attention to the proactive role of non-human actors, particularly their interaction with and influence on human actors in art production as a new guise of (co-)translation.

3.Xu Bing as an artistranslator

Xu frequently asserts that artistic creativity should derive from what he likes to call 社会现场 shehui xianchang ‘social scenes’, rather than the system of art per se, such as knowledge of art history and the study of art movements and styles (Visit HK Museums 2024Visit HK Museums 2024 “Artist Sharing Session: Contemporary Art and Social Scene.” YouTube. May 10. Video, 1:23:30. https://​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=M7he​_24DOnEVisit HK Museums 2024 “Artist Sharing Session: Contemporary Art and Social Scene.” YouTube. May 10. Video, 1:23:30. https://​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=M7he​_24DOnE). Xu’s proposition suggests his advocacy of translaboration between art and other disciplines. Indeed, with an eye on the wider domains of society, his artistic practices tackle multifarious ‘social scenes’.

After emigrating to the US in 1990, Xu found himself ‘illiterate’ in the alien linguistic and sociocultural context, as if living somewhere in between the two different cultures (Xu 2014bXu, Bing 2014b “《英文方块字》[ Square word calligraphy ].” Jintian (2): 147–154.Xu, Bing 2014b “《英文方块字》[Square word calligraphy].” Jintian (2): 147–154., 151–152). This formed the genesis of his Square Word Calligraphy (Xu 1996Xu, Bing 1996 An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy. Interactive installation. Artpace, San Antonio.Xu, Bing 1996 An Introduction to Square Word Calligraphy. Interactive installation. Artpace, San Antonio.), a devised system whereby English words are written in the form of a square, with all the letters of any English word formatted into radicals used to write Chinese characters. The cultural clash he experienced aroused his mixed way of thinking/reading, which ultimately gave rise to the translingual and transcultural work. While this ‘scene’ might be personal for Xu as one of the diaspora of artists, some others are associated more intimately with collective memories. Xu witnessed the September 11 attacks when he was working in his studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His installation Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? (Xu 2004Xu, Bing 2004 Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? Installation. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.Xu, Bing 2004 Where Does the Dust Itself Collect? Installation. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.) utilizes dust gathered from the streets of Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of the terrorist incident and recreates a field of dust across the gallery floor that is stenciled with a poem by 慧能 Huineng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism: “As there is nothing from the first, Where does the dust itself collect?” (Xu 2014aXu, Bing 2014a “9.11，从今天起，世界变了 [9/11, from today, the world has changed].” Jintian (2): 52–58.Xu, Bing 2014a “9.11，从今天起，世界变了 [9/11, from today, the world has changed].” Jintian (2): 52–58., 52–54). In the face of the horrific scene where the two 110-storey towers collapsed in massive clouds of dust, Xu sees and invites his audience to see the transient nature (‘impermanence’, in Buddhist terms) of all existence and beings. More recently, Xu’s attention has been drawn to outer space, an interplanetary scene born out of advances in astronautics. Xu Bing Tianshu22. 天书 Tianshu, literally ‘book from the sky’, connotes ‘nonsense’ in Chinese colloquial speech. The name is a play on the nonsensical characters contained in the work itself. Rocket (Xu 2021aXu, Bing. 2021a Xu Bing Tianshu Rocket. Art rocket. Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, Jiuquan (launch site).Xu, Bing. 2021a Xu Bing Tianshu Rocket. Art rocket. Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, Jiuquan (launch site).), whose surface was painted with invented characters found in the archetypal Book from the Sky (Xu 1988Xu, Bing 1988 Book from the Sky. Installation. National Art Museum of China, Beijing.Xu, Bing 1988 Book from the Sky. Installation. National Art Museum of China, Beijing.), was launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Northwest China. Xu worked across disciplines with aerospace and materials scientists during this project, and he refers to the convergence of art and rocket technology as “[u]nfamiliar two-way mutual viewing” that unveils what is invisible to one-way observation (Xu 2021bXu, Bing 2021b “The Destiny of the First Art Rocket.” Xu Bing’s Studio. https://​www​.xubing​.com​/en​/database​/writing​/696Xu, Bing 2021b “The Destiny of the First Art Rocket.” Xu Bing’s Studio. https://​www​.xubing​.com​/en​/database​/writing​/696).

Even a cursory glance at Xu’s oeuvre demonstrates a strong sense of translaborative engagement. He seeks to integrate art with the complexities of contemporary society, both in China and beyond. The various ‘social scenes’, ranging from cultural and historical events to scientific settings, are actually the realities that inform his artistic creations as an artistranslator. These creations and practices illustrate that Xu has not only a translational mindset to understand realities and art in a transdisciplinary manner, but also the translational ability to transform the realities into/with his artworks. A more telling case is the production of his Phoenix, which exemplifies how the artistranslator translates, retranslates, and co-translates in a dynamic relationship with evolving realities, as will be examined in the next sections.

4. Phoenix as artistic (re)translation

The creation of Phoenix offered a timely opportunity for the artist to closely look at the Chinese society that he had been away from for a long time. In 2007, when Xu had just returned to China after living in New York for eighteen years, he was commissioned to produce a public artwork for the atrium of World Financial Centre in Beijing, a property project of the consortium of 李兆基 Lee Shau-kee, a Hong Kong business magnate. Situated within the heart of Beijing’s CBD, the World Financial Centre was then under construction. In a conversation with the art journalist Jason Edward Kaufman, Xu describes how he felt about his first visit to the construction site:

There is a huge thrill in standing there […]. The construction site, the working [and living] conditions of the migrant laborers, and their contrast with the modern high-rises stimulated me deeply, that all along these high-tech structures were the result of such low-tech methods. These things inspired me, and made me realize that the materials and atmosphere at the site were their own powerful language.(Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 119; my emphasis)

For Vidal Claramonte (2022Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. , 85), (artis)translators are interested in “languages that include looks, sounds, colors, and sensations,” namely “all the representations of the world created in any semiotic system.” Xu is obviously sensitive to such languages. In the eyes of Xu, the architectural debris, tools, and living supplies — things that were being used by the migrant laborers — speak for those laborers and thus become the source language of his artistic translation. Xu came up with the idea of using what he calls “construction excrement” (Thompson 2012Thompson, Joseph 2012 “Phoenixes Alight.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 9–19).Thompson, Joseph 2012 “Phoenixes Alight.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 9–19)., 10) of the building itself to form an installation to be housed in the luxurious building, which would show the dramatic contrast between labor and capital while being an ironic take on capitalism. To be more precise, Xu wanted to create a pair of flying birds and hang them inside the atrium because the glass structure resembled a big crystal cage. It would present an image of “arrested flight” (9) that signifies the tension between labor and the accumulation of capital in contemporary China. In doing so, Xu translates what he sees — the realities of today’s China.33.Xu sees huge differences between China’s past and present as well as between China and other countries. In Xu’s own words, “the inspiration and nutrition come from the realities of today’s China […] today’s China is different from the China I left in the ’90s; it’s practically two different nations. And, of course, it is different from the America I lived in for eighteen years. The problems in China, the variables there, the energy there, the conflict amongst different sets of values in China, are richer than in any other place. This is the unique backdrop of Phoenix” (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 124).

After negotiation with the investor of this art project, Xu decided to make two phoenixes. Then, the practical question faced by the artistranslator was how to translate the construction materials into a concrete body of the phoenix, a mythological creature so non-existent as to provide people with infinite possibilities for explanation and imagination. Almost every culture has its own phoenixes, and every era in China has its own versions, whether visual or literary. Therefore, Xu’s subjectivity is evident in framing an ideal design of the phoenix. After doing research on the imagery and symbolism of phoenixes from different dynasties of China, Xu was partial to the feel of a ferocious Han Dynasty (206 BCE — 220 CE) phoenix, whereas Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) phoenixes are lither and more likable (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 119).44.Although Xu consulted phoenixes from different historic periods, his own Phoenix (at least originally) belongs to the China at the time of his creation, not any period of the past. In his view, “a phoenix of any specific dynasty would not be able to represent the phoenix of today’s China […] that bears countless scars; it has lived through great hardship. But it has also adorned itself with great self-respect” (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 119). Lydia Liu (as cited in Rajchman 2012Rajchman, John 2012 “The Flight of the Phoenixes: Xu Bing’s New Birds.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 29–39).Rajchman, John 2012 “The Flight of the Phoenixes: Xu Bing’s New Birds.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 29–39)., 32) views Xu’s Phoenix (and the larger role of China as well as Chinese art) in a more profound way and contends that the work does not belong to existing art history because it is “neither Chinese nor Western, modern or traditional, counterfeit or genuine.” Despite the particular preference for a Han phoenix, Xu admits that, technically speaking, the installation naturally took on some of the feel of a Qing phoenix (i.e., ornamental) because it was so big that it had to be elaborately assembled piece by piece (ibid.). The assemblage demonstrates Xu’s delicate translational labor in a more spectacular way. He carefully fitted those construction materials, which are generally biomimicry-based themselves, to the most relevant parts of the phoenix’s body, in terms of both shape and (industrial/biological) function. For example:

The hardhats form the comb because they are red and worn on top. The concrete mixer is the stomach because the two share a function of stirring and blending. “The heads of both the male feng and the female huang are made from the nose of industrial jackhammers, a contemporary translation of their strength and ferocity (historical images of the phoenix often show the powerful bird with a snake in its talons or beak)” (Cross 2012Cross, Susan 2012 Xu Bing: Phoenix. North Adams: MASS MoCA.Cross, Susan 2012 Xu Bing: Phoenix. North Adams: MASS MoCA., 9). The shovels apparently make good claws. A spade becomes a piece of feather because the handle’s function resembles that of the quill. The impellers are on the long tail feathers due to their relation to aerodynamics.(Jiang 2018Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45.Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45., 31)

Following such anatomical logic, Xu’s artistic translation is not only faithful to the structure of the bird’s organic components but also ‘readable’ for its target audience. The finished product consists of two phoenixes (凤凰 fenghuang) — the male feng and the female huang, respectively measuring twenty-seven and twenty-eight meters long and together weighing twelve tons. When the audience views the installation from a distance, they will only recognize it as two grandiose phoenixes (or birds, at least); but when they get closer, they will realize that the elements constituting it are ordinary tools of labor(ers), discover the humorous interplay between industrial materials and animalistic organs, and contemplate the concept of labor and its interrelatedness to the phoenix’s laborious rebirth from the debris. The artistranslator’s subjectivity finally invites the audience’s subjectivity in interpreting their own phoenixes through their way of seeing the reality.

However, one may find it problematic to treat ‘phoenix’ and fenghuang as culturally equivalent, as implied by the title of the artwork. According to Nigg (2016)Nigg, Joseph 2016 The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nigg, Joseph 2016 The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , the single name ‘phoenix’ established by Herodotus in the fifth century BCE joins disparate birds with similar traits from different cultures, and the earliest translation of fenghuang as ‘phoenix’ can be traced back to James Legge’s (1865)Legge, James 1865 The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes (Volume 3, Part 1). London: Henry Frowde.Legge, James 1865 The Chinese Classics: With a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena and Copious Indexes (Volume 3, Part 1). London: Henry Frowde. English rendering of the Chinese classics 竹书纪年 Zhushu Jinian ‘Annals of the bamboo books’. While the Chinese fenghuang never dies, the Western phoenix “periodically dies in its nest, often by fire, and is eternally reborn,” which is regarded as the greatest difference between them; but “their mythical similarities will become apparent as the Western Phoenix cycles through time” (Nigg 2016Nigg, Joseph 2016 The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nigg, Joseph 2016 The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. , 22). That is to say, it is the very act of (interlingual) translation that has determined the name of the Chinese bird in Western nomenclature and led to the merging of the two different birds. Xu’s artistic translation marks a further fusion of both — what Jiang (2018Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45.Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45., 32) describes as “a conglomerate of fenghuang-phoenix” — by referring to visual variants of the fenghuang and borrowing the mythology of rebirth associated with the phoenix.

The visual appearance of Xu’s Phoenix deviates substantially from the depiction of fenghuang offered by the first surviving Chinese lexicon, 尔雅 Erya (third century BCE): it “has a cock’s head, a snake’s neck, a swallow’s ‘chin’, a tortoise’s back, and a fish’s tail. It has five colors and its height is about six feet” (Hachisuka 1924Hachisuka, Masauji 1924 “The Identification of the Chinese Phoenix.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 56 (4): 585–589. Hachisuka, Masauji 1924 “The Identification of the Chinese Phoenix.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 56 (4): 585–589. , 585). This is because the image of the Chinese phoenix is never stable and has evolved over time, which means that there is no single, fixed ‘text’ that can be considered the original of, and can be compared with, Xu’s artistic translation. Instead, the original for any artistranslator is always the reality that concerns them. Through the reinvention of the glorious phoenix image with industrial trash, what is really being translated by Xu is the migrant workers’ dignity despite the hardship they endure. However, upon its completion, the Phoenix is bound to be translated back into the reality (or different realities) by the audience. From a reception perspective, for artistic translation as such, the original and the translation constantly complement one another in a dynamic interaction of meaning-making, with the line between the two categories becoming blurred. Thus, interrogating art production as translation desacralizes the long-standing perception of the ‘original’ as a concrete prototype of translation and contests the similarity/difference paradigm, as well as the source-text and target-text dichotomy, that has dominated Translation Studies.

Apart from the visual design, the contextualization of this artistic translation, namely the venue for exhibition, is another important consideration for the artistranslator. As Xu sees it, the World Financial Centre would have been the optimum setting that could help his work to foreground “questions of Chinese capital, labor, urbanization, the lowest rung of society, the eruption of capital” (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 122). However, for multiple reasons, Xu’s Phoenix was rejected by the initial investor, Lee Shau-kee, and therefore unable to be installed in the World Financial Centre, the site it was originally conceived for. This incident actually enriches the realities embedded in the Phoenix for it discloses that not only labor but also art is circumscribed by capital. As a result, Xu sought an alternative place also around Beijing’s CBD after the project was resumed by the new funder, 林百里 Barry Lam, a Taiwanese billionaire businessman. In 2010, Phoenix was eventually unveiled at the square in front of Today Art Museum, against a background of dense high-rises and skyscrapers in the distance. This venue to a large degree restores Xu’s initial conception of his translational context.

Since its display in China,55.In addition to its first exhibition in Beijing in 2010, Phoenix was also shown at the World Expo in Shanghai in the same year. In such an (inter)national celebratory context, it produced a sense of 百鸟朝凤 bai niao chao feng ‘one hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix’ (an ancient Chinese idiom implying a harmonious, well-governed society), which Xu tried to mitigate in order to avoid symbolic associations related to auspiciousness and power. Xu and Barry Lam came to an agreement that after the World Expo and before the work went to Taiwan (to be hung in Lam’s computer museum), there would be a two-year period during which Xu could decide where it would be shown around the world. Phoenix has been retranslated by the artistranslator to different target cultures, which allows us to see its metamorphosis in each place it perches. In 2012, it was first brought to the US, exhibited at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams. The site used to be a factory and was historically linked to China and Chinese migrant laborers.66.See Thompson (2012)Thompson, Joseph 2012 “Phoenixes Alight.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 9–19).Thompson, Joseph 2012 “Phoenixes Alight.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 9–19). for a detailed review of the history of MASS MoCA, especially its factory predecessor, and the (dis)appearance of Chinese migrant laborers in North Adams. As pointed out by Joseph Thompson, the founding director of the museum and the curator of the exhibition, in the late 1800s,

North Adams had the largest population of Chinese immigrant workers of any city east of the Mississippi river […] Nearly all traces of that Chinese population were lost by the 1920s and 30s. […] So, to the extent that these birds, these great phoenixes somehow landed back in this factory space, bringing with them the signs of Chinese labour and hand work.(“Interviews with Joseph Thompson” 2015“Interviews with Joseph Thompson” 2015 Xu Bing’s Studio. April 6. http://​www​.xubing​.com​/cn​/database​/interview​/343“Interviews with Joseph Thompson” 2015 Xu Bing’s Studio. April 6. http://​www​.xubing​.com​/cn​/database​/interview​/343)

This unique context reinforces the concept of labor integral to Phoenix from a transnational perspective. It was the migration of a Chinese workforce to North Adams and, eventually, of US manufacturing to China that added more associations to Xu’s Phoenix as a carrier of historical memories. As Xu likes to put it, at MASS MoCA “it feels as if the Phoenixes have returned to the origins of capital, that they have come home to roost” (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 125). Such new intercultural meanings were also generated by Phoenix’s re-exhibition at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in 2014. Since the Cathedral is monumental and lofty, the Phoenix gained a sacred quality (Vogel 2014Vogel, Carol 2014 “Phoenixes Rise in China and Float in New York: Xu Bing Installs His Sculptures at St. John the Divine.” New York Times. February 14. https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2014​/02​/15​/arts​/design​/xu​-bing​-installs​-his​-sculptures​-at​-st​-john​-the​-divine​.html/Vogel, Carol 2014 “Phoenixes Rise in China and Float in New York: Xu Bing Installs His Sculptures at St. John the Divine.” New York Times. February 14. https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2014​/02​/15​/arts​/design​/xu​-bing​-installs​-his​-sculptures​-at​-st​-john​-the​-divine​.html/) and showed greater solicitude for human beings, especially in the eyes of a Western audience. As the curator Judith Goldman comments, whether you choose to see it as a Western myth of resurrection and renewal or a Chinese symbol of unity and grace, “the phoenix’s spiritual aspect comes out in the Cathedral” (NYC Arts 2014NYC Arts 2014 “ ‘Phoenix’ by Xu Bing: Curator’s choice.” NYC Arts. September 10. Video, 4:26. https://​www​.nyc​-arts​.org​/showclips​/113791​/phoenix​-by​-xu​-bing​-i​-curators​-choiceNYC Arts 2014 “ ‘Phoenix’ by Xu Bing: Curator’s choice.” NYC Arts. September 10. Video, 4:26. https://​www​.nyc​-arts​.org​/showclips​/113791​/phoenix​-by​-xu​-bing​-i​-curators​-choice; my emphasis). In fact, Xu had both feng and huang installed with their heads facing the entrance of the nave instead of the altar, because he hoped to avoid making the work too ‘religious’ (Vogel 2014Vogel, Carol 2014 “Phoenixes Rise in China and Float in New York: Xu Bing Installs His Sculptures at St. John the Divine.” New York Times. February 14. https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2014​/02​/15​/arts​/design​/xu​-bing​-installs​-his​-sculptures​-at​-st​-john​-the​-divine​.html/Vogel, Carol 2014 “Phoenixes Rise in China and Float in New York: Xu Bing Installs His Sculptures at St. John the Divine.” New York Times. February 14. https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2014​/02​/15​/arts​/design​/xu​-bing​-installs​-his​-sculptures​-at​-st​-john​-the​-divine​.html/). This reveals that the target audience’s interpretative subjectivity is not confined by the artistranslator’s creative subjectivity and, expectedly or unexpectedly, increases the vibrancy of the translational product in a new sociocultural context.

Furthermore, at the invitation of the curator Okwui Enwezor, Xu produced Phoenix 2015, a second version of his Phoenix project, for the 56th International Art Exhibition of Venice Biennale 2015. With basically the same appearance, Phoenix 2015 was made larger in scale77.According to the website of Xu’s Studio, in the 2015 version, feng and huang respectively measure thirty-one and thirty meters long, compared to twenty-seven and twenty-eight meters in the first version. and thus fiercer than the original version, because, as Xu explains, “the changes over the years [between the two versions], especially in global relations, inevitably equipped the pair of phoenixes with extraordinary power and a sense of crisis” (Zhuo n.d.Zhuo, Xing n.d. “在中国现场制造凤凰 [Making the Phoenix on the site of China].” Xu Bing’s Studio. https://​www​.xubing​.com​/cn​/database​/interview​/427Zhuo, Xing n.d. “在中国现场制造凤凰 [Making the Phoenix on the site of China].” Xu Bing’s Studio. https://​www​.xubing​.com​/cn​/database​/interview​/427; my translation). This sense of crisis was also strengthened through Xu’s addition of new industrial debris, particularly modern technological waste, to the 2015 version. For example, “held in the beak is an iPad, much like a book, which gives a sense of transmission of urgent messages” (Yang and Yuan 2015Yang, Shin-Yi, and Yuan Yuan 2015 “Story of Making the Phoenix.” In Xu Bing: Phoenix, edited by Enoia Ballade, 112–180. Hong Kong: Thircuir.Yang, Shin-Yi, and Yuan Yuan 2015 “Story of Making the Phoenix.” In Xu Bing: Phoenix, edited by Enoia Ballade, 112–180. Hong Kong: Thircuir., 154). In this sense, Xu’s retranslation situates the Chinese-born Phoenix in a new globalized context, resulting from the way the artistranslator sees those more complicated social realities (in respect of labor, economy, technology, etc.) in the face of uncontainable internationalization.

5.Translaboration with capital: Funds and investors

As examined in Section 4, Xu exerts his subjectivity in translating realities into a concrete artwork, but the artistranslator does not perform such translation in a vacuum. Collaboration, a concept rooted in organization studies, is defined to occur “when a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process” (Wood and Gray 1991Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. , 146), which can be observed in Xu’s translaborative practice. At the beginning of the art project, it was through Ravenel International Art Group (an art auction house headquartered in Taiwan) that Lee Shau-kee’s consortium (hereinafter Investor #1) commissioned Xu. Xu hesitated over the project at first, because he rarely makes public art and considers it visual hegemony that forces people to behold (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 117). However, funds came to Xu as a pivotal actor that stimulated his interest in accepting the commission. As Xu recalls:

They told me that if I took on the commission, investors in the WFC [World Financial Centre] might donate some money to the Central Academy of Fine Arts [CAFA]. They were trying to draw me in. I had just come back to the Academy as Vice President and I wanted to do some good, so I said I would take a look at the site […](ibid.)

At that moment, Xu had just returned to China to assume the vice-presidency of CAFA. Hence, the proposed funds for CAFA and its students appealed to him and, together with what he later saw at the construction site, including the tools and debris, functioned as a persuasive actor that ‘drew him in’.

Vidal Claramonte (2022Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. Vidal Claramonte, MªCarmen África 2022 Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. , 23) argues that a painting could possibly represent not only what (realities) the painter sees but what the person who has commissioned the painting perceives. This turns out to be true in Xu’s practice. Xu’s initial proposal was to make two red-crested cranes. For Xu, the red-crested crane represents longevity, with its meaning taken from the phrase 鹤寿 heshou ‘the crane’s longevity’. On the contrary, Investor #1 thought of the crane as an inauspicious symbol for their chair, Lee Shau-kee, who was in his eighties, because they interpreted it with a Chinese Taoist belief describing death, namely, 驾鹤西归，羽化升仙 Jia he xi gui, yu hua sheng xian ‘Riding a crane to return to the West, growing wings to ascend to heaven’. A crucial element of collaboration is that each involved stakeholder retains their own autonomy (Wood and Gray 1991Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. , 146), as shown by the completely opposite understandings of the same metaphorical symbol by Investor #1 and Xu, perhaps due to their differing cultural backgrounds (of the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong, respectively). For this reason, Xu replaced the crane with another symbol — the phoenix, a metaphor of transition from waste to wealth made by labor (Ouyang 2014Ouyang, Jianghe 2014 凤凰：注释版 [Phoenix: Annotated version]. Beijing: China CITIC Press.Ouyang, Jianghe 2014 凤凰：注释版 [Phoenix: Annotated version]. Beijing: China CITIC Press., 52). As such, a physiological taboo on the part of Investor #1 negated Xu’s earliest conception. Xu’s compromise indicates that his subjectivity as an artistranslator was greatly confined by Investor #1 and that translaborators in some cases “may agree to relinquish some autonomy to the collaborative alliance” (Wood and Gray 1991Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. , 148).

The tension continued throughout their translaboration. When Xu was inspired to transport the waste of the building back into itself, he suspected this idea would not be welcomed by Investor #1, who fancied an elaborate artwork to adorn the building. The art company Ravenel, Xu’s primary point of contact, played a key role as what Gray (1989Gray, Barbara 1989 Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Gray, Barbara 1989 Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass., 25) terms a “mediator or facilitator” whose task is to “help structure a dialogue within which the parties can work out their differences.” Ravenel had a strategic method of getting Investor #1 to slowly accept Xu’s idea by staggering the disclosure of their differences. For example, Investor #1 was not given the sketch/detailed proposal (even though it was prepared by Xu) at their first meeting but was gradually updated on the project’s progress (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 119). The mediator’s communication tactic assists in circumventing direct confrontation between the translaborators in terms of their divergent visions of the project, thereby preserving their shared intention to collaborate at the outset.

Investor #1 did approve of Xu’s idea before the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. The crisis took its toll on the real estate industry and forced Investor #1 to reconsider their sponsorship for the project. In the documentary Xu Bing: Phoenix, Xu points out that “when the economy was growing, they [Investor #1] had a greater tolerance for art, humor, self-mockery, and a bit of self-criticism […] However, when things turned bad, their ability to accept this kind of artwork became limited” (Traub 2013Traub, Daniel dir. 2013 Xu Bing: Phoenix. New York: Itinerant Pictures. Film.Traub, Daniel dir. 2013 Xu Bing: Phoenix. New York: Itinerant Pictures. Film., 7:58). Indeed, to cut down their budgets amid the crisis, Investor #1 became less receptive to the metaphor, humor, and irony buried within the Phoenix than they were when the piece was ordered (at the time the property market was on the rise). They eventually terminated their commission, after Xu refused their request to cover the work with a decorative layer of crystal to make it more beautiful.

In Luo’s (2020)Luo, Wenyan 2020 Translation as Actor-Networking: Actors, Agencies, and Networks in the Making of Arthur Waley’s English Translation of the Chinese ‘Journey to the West’. New York: Routledge. Luo, Wenyan 2020 Translation as Actor-Networking: Actors, Agencies, and Networks in the Making of Arthur Waley’s English Translation of the Chinese ‘Journey to the West’. New York: Routledge. study, World War II (1939–1945) was a competing non-human actor that imposed restrictions on Arthur Waley’s English translation of the Chinese novel 西游记 Xi You Ji ‘Journey to the West’ by limiting the resources (as other involved actors) essential to the production of the book. Here too, the financial crisis as a powerful actor strengthened the tension between Xu and Investor #1 by tightening up the funds for the project. Under such restrictive circumstances, economic and ideological conflicts become intertwined and irreconcilable. In this translaborative practice, Xu and Investor #1 engage with a shared objective of producing the artwork, yet each is driven by distinct “individual interests” (Gray 1989Gray, Barbara 1989 Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Gray, Barbara 1989 Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass., 6). Xu pursued his artistic expression of the harsh reality with crude, recycled materials whereas Investor #1 intended an ornate installation as decoration. This basic ideological difference caused the collaborative failure, as the responsibility of stakeholders in collaboration is not to “forego,” but to “protect” or (leverage the others’ ability to) “advance” their own interest (6, 273).

After the withdrawal of Investor #1, Ravenel made considerable efforts to find a new patron for Xu’s project. In the end, the art collector Barry Lam revived the completion of the work by investing more than twenty million CNY (2.85 million USD). The huge amount overtly reflects the indispensable role of funds in every possible stage of the production — hiring workers, factories, and machines (e.g., the rent for the six cranes suspending the work at the Beijing exhibition was about 2565 USD per day), purchasing architectural debris, shipping the materials/work, and so forth. As the contemporary Chinese filmmaker 贾樟柯 Jia Zhangke remarks: “It is almost impossible for art to function independently of capital in the contemporary society […] The relationship between art and capital is intricate, with both tension and gongmou (collusion)” (Jia n.d., as cited in Jiang 2018Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45.Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45., 43).

6.Translaboration with labor: Construction materials and workers

Apart from the funds, the construction materials serve as another initiator of the Phoenix project, encouraging Xu’s engagement with labor(ers). Zwischenberger and Alfer (2022)Zwischenberger, Cornelia, and Alexa Alfer 2022 “Translaboration: Translation and Labour.” Translation in Society 1 (2): 200–223. Zwischenberger, Cornelia, and Alexa Alfer 2022 “Translaboration: Translation and Labour.” Translation in Society 1 (2): 200–223. underscore the labor-dimension of both translaboration and translation, claiming that labor would help elucidate translation practices and re-probe the translation concept (e.g., from a socioeconomic perspective). This becomes apparent in Xu’s translaborative practice that not only explores labor as a conceptual focus but is itself a manifestation of collective labor. Xu has once associated the practice to his childhood experience of working with laborers during the Cultural Revolution,88.The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was an upheaval launched by the Chinese Communist Party Chairman 毛泽东 Mao Zedong to preserve communism. During the movement, millions of educated urban youths were sent to rural areas to work with and learn from the peasantry. Mao believed that this would help to create a new society where there was no gap between rural and urban, laborers and intellectuals. stating:

[Phoenix] is definitely connected to the education I received in China, and a relationship with and an affection for the common laborer. In China, when I was a child and a student, it was deemed necessary to venture down into the villages and the factories if an artist wanted to become a good artist, to struggle alongside and become friends with the workers, to eat and live together. When the sentiments and standpoint of an intellectual artist transformed into the sentiments and standpoint of the common worker or peasant, that’s when you became a good artist.(Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125)., 123)

With his affection for and sentiments shared with laborers, Xu mobilized and gave voice to the subjectivities of the workers participating in the project. There were about ten workers, along with Xu and other intellectuals and student artists, fabricating the work collaboratively in a sculpture factory for over two years. Much more familiar with the construction materials and tools, the workers knew better than Xu did the inner character of the materials and how they fit together. Therefore, their unique insights and skills were fully employed in the making of Phoenix. They went through an experience different from their work on other ordinary construction projects, and even felt proud of the finished work as if they were the masters of the piece (Kaufman 2012Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 117–125).Kaufman, Jason E. 2012 “A Conversation with Xu Bing.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 117–125).; Rajchman 2012Rajchman, John 2012 “The Flight of the Phoenixes: Xu Bing’s New Birds.” In (Coffino et al. 2012, 29–39).Rajchman, John 2012 “The Flight of the Phoenixes: Xu Bing’s New Birds.” In (Coffino et al. 20121, 29–39).). To this extent, the workers are treated as “autonomous” collaborators (Wood and Gray 1991Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. Wood, Donna J., and Barbara Gray 1991 “Toward a Comprehensive Theory of Collaboration.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 27 (2): 139–162. ) by the artistranslator and are arguably co-translators of the artistic translation. With reference to Harding (2013)Harding, Nancy 2013 On Being at Work: The Social Construction of the Employee. New York: Routledge. Harding, Nancy 2013 On Being at Work: The Social Construction of the Employee. New York: Routledge. , Zwischenberger and Alfer (2022)Zwischenberger, Cornelia, and Alexa Alfer 2022 “Translaboration: Translation and Labour.” Translation in Society 1 (2): 200–223. Zwischenberger, Cornelia, and Alexa Alfer 2022 “Translaboration: Translation and Labour.” Translation in Society 1 (2): 200–223. differentiate ‘labor’ from ‘work’ by discerning that labor stands for the traditional, dehumanized “job that is repetitive, monotonous, and involves toil and pain” whereas “work grants individuals the possibility of developing, actualising, or realising a self” (204). On this point, both labor and work constitute the workers’ (co-)translation, where they still perform physically demanding duties while becoming relatively active subjects, instead of “‘zombie-machine[s]’ […] made out of human flesh but without any desire for agency” (Harding 2013Harding, Nancy 2013 On Being at Work: The Social Construction of the Employee. New York: Routledge. Harding, Nancy 2013 On Being at Work: The Social Construction of the Employee. New York: Routledge. , 6).

Moreover, their agency/subjectivities were made visible to the public by Xu’s narration of the workers’ contribution to the project on various occasions. For example, the booklet The Story of the Phoenix: Xu Bing’s Phoenix Project (2012) published by Xu Bing’s Studio clearly presents the production process as collective labor, documenting the participation of almost every actor, such as staff members from Ravenel, the two investors, Xu’s assistants, colleagues, and friends, and, of course, the laborers. It specifically records the face (via a photo) and voice (words) of 大郎 Da Lang, one of the workers, who expressed that

Professor Xu would say, ‘Doesn’t it look great if you put this thing in that position?’ So I would think about it myself and realize that it was better than before. I slowly began to try my own hand at it. Professor Xu was not unwilling to let you make changes and, in fact, wanted you to propose changes. That doesn’t work with other artists. ‘Take that thing down, switch this for me!’ They usually have that attitude.(Zhai 2012Zhai, Yongming 2012 The Story of the Phoenix: Xu Bing’s Phoenix Project. Beijing: Xu Bing’s Studio.Zhai, Yongming 2012 The Story of the Phoenix: Xu Bing’s Phoenix Project. Beijing: Xu Bing’s Studio., 41)

Such documentation serves to convey the artistranslator’s acknowledgment of the presence of the workers as his co-translators. As evidenced by Da Lang’s account, it is the exchange of ideas and knowledge between the artistranslator and the workers that actualizes their translaboration, through which the laborers’ wisdom and talents are absorbed into the artistic production. Xu ensures that in their translaboration “one has to express oneself, one has to speak, communicate, cooperate, and so forth” (Lazzarato 1996Lazzarato, Maurizio 1996 “Immaterial Labor.” In Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, edited by Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, 133–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Lazzarato, Maurizio 1996 “Immaterial Labor.” In Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, edited by Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, 133–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press., 134). Inspired by the technique of Phoenix, Da Lang even created his own works — a tea table and chairs — out of the available debris at the factory. Xu appreciated and collected the chairs made by Da Lang and talked about them many times in media interviews as well as in The Story of the Phoenix. Therefore, the artistranslator not only gives full play to the subjectivities of his co-translators by leaving room for them to propose changes to the Phoenix (although, presumably, Xu would have the final word, given the power dynamics inherent in such collaborative authorship/translatorship), but, more importantly, increases their visibility by openly foregrounding and applauding their creative labor.

Meanwhile, the construction materials themselves are another contributor to the workers’ visibility. In his article 《凤凰》在大文化上的意义 Fenghuang zai da wenhua shang de yiyi ‘The significance of Phoenix in the wider cultural context’, 欧阳江河 Ouyang Jianghe, a contemporary Chinese poet who wrote a long ekphrastic poem 凤凰 Fenghuang ‘Phoenix’ in response to Xu’s installation, ponders over the traces of labor left on the materials that constitute Xu’s work. As he expounds,

[…] the hardhats that had been worn make one wonder where those heads once under the hardhats have gone and what they are thinking. Those tools [were] once touched by the hands of laborers and left with their sweat and warmth. The warmth and sweat stains of labor have turned into rust over time, [showing] the existence and transformations of these breaths of life.(Ouyang 2010Ouyang, Jianghe 2010 “《凤凰》在大文化上的意义 [The significance of Phoenix in the wider cultural context].” Jintian (2): 282–286.Ouyang, Jianghe 2010 “《凤凰》在大文化上的意义 [The significance of Phoenix in the wider cultural context].” Jintian (2): 282–286., 286; my translation)

The construction materials and tools — which used to be intimately handled by the hired hands and involved in the laborers’ life experience — have a history, and therefore have their own power to speak for laborers as active subjects. To be precise, the materials of Xu’s Phoenix tell the history of the workers who fabricated the artwork; they also further bring back the history of those who built the World Financial Centre, although in reality the existence of the builders was hidden and effaced from the privileged space upon its completion. Jiang (2018)Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45.Jiang, Junjie 2018 “The Doubleness of Sight/Site: Xu Bing’s Phoenix as an Intended Public Art Project.” Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 17 (2): 29–45. views the construction materials used for the Phoenix as “indexical signs that point directly to labour, thus making the obscured labour — as theorized by Marx — visible again” (33), countering “the de-subjectifying power of commodity” (35). Marx (1990)Marx, Karl 1990 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume 1) [orig. Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Band I]. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin.Marx, Karl 1990 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume 1) [orig. Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, Band I]. Translated by Ben Fowkes. New York: Penguin. asserts that human labor is an objective character of the commodity and that the commodity’s value is determined by its intrinsic use value irrelevant to labor. On the contrary, the immaterial labor that has dominated the modern economy “put[s] subjectivity to work both in the activation of productive cooperation and in the production of the ‘cultural’ contents of commodities” (Lazzarato 1996Lazzarato, Maurizio 1996 “Immaterial Labor.” In Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, edited by Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, 133–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Lazzarato, Maurizio 1996 “Immaterial Labor.” In Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics, edited by Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt, 133–148. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press., 143; my emphasis). Conforming to the latter, the workers’ labor of producing the Phoenix has applied their subjectivities in managing the construction materials. It is therefore no surprise that the materials make visible these workers who subjectify themselves through their labor.

All in all, despite the social disparity between capital and labor, they are the two coexisting translaborators of art in the Phoenix project. Looking back on the entire production process, both funds and construction materials stimulated the artistranslator to take on the project, during which he worked with the two investors and construction laborers. Although art acts in 共谋 gongmou ‘collusion’ with capital, there is constant tension between them: when their interests come into conflict, art has to reconcile itself to capital and even runs the risk of being abandoned by capital. In this particular case, the tension was moderated and exacerbated respectively by Ravenel (as the mediator between Xu and the investors) and the global financial crisis. Additionally, the Phoenix project was a labor-intensive process. Not only did the construction workers take an active role in the creation, but the construction materials became a mouthpiece for the workers’ labor. The materials, together with the artistranslator’s narratives, have contributed to the growth of the visibility of labor(ers).

7.Concluding remarks

The concept of translaboration encourages us to take advantage of translation as a practical or conceptual paradigm for transferring ideas and objects within or across disciplines. In this sense, the artistic production of Xu’s Phoenix is conceptualized as a process of translation. As an artistranslator, Xu translates the immediate reality of China he sees into an artwork with the language of construction materials, and retranslates the work by reframing its associated sociocultural realities in different target cultures and periods of time. The subjectivity of both the artistranslator and his target audience plays a crucial role in bringing Phoenix alive in each local context.

Meanwhile, such a translation process engenders translaboration between a variety of contributing actors and is inherently collaborative. It has been demonstrated that non-human actors, such as funds, construction materials, and even the financial crisis are not as passive or peripheral to the labor of human actors as might be perceived; instead, they are able to make a powerful impact, either positively or negatively. Hence, even though the artistranslator was creating his own translation work, he was subject to the influence of the ideology of his co-translators, namely the involved human and non-human actors, and was granted a limited amount of freedom, as with the ‘arrested flight’ of the Phoenix, to exert his subjectivity in the artistic translation.

This study focuses mainly on the translaboration in the production of Xu’s Phoenix. In truth, there were more actors involved in the (re)exhibitions of the work, such as the curators mentioned earlier and the poets who attended the events that accompanied the exhibitions. For example, a poetry reading event named Birds of Metal in Flight: An Evening of Poetry with 5+5 was organized at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to celebrate the ending of the exhibition of Xu’s Phoenix there. The event featured ten renowned poets, five from the US and five from China, including Ouyang Jianghe who read excerpts from his poem Fenghuang at the event. Presenting the artwork visually and the ekphrastic poem verbally in the same venue constructs an additional translaboration between the two creators/works. Clearly, it was the collective labor of all the participating actors that made the production as well as the exhibitions possible, allowing the labor portrayed by Phoenix to shine through.

As Lee (2014aLee, Tong King 2014a “Toward a Material Poetics in Chinese: Text, Translation, and Technology in the Works of Chen Li.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 26 (1): 71–104.Lee, Tong King 2014a “Toward a Material Poetics in Chinese: Text, Translation, and Technology in the Works of Chen Li.” Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 26 (1): 71–104., 95–96) rightly points out, translation should be viewed as “a multifaceted ‘cluster’ concept in contemporary poetics” so as to reveal how a cross-semiotic event can be seen as translational. As also suggested by this study, translaboration drops an inspirational hint that we are able to approach contemporary artistic products and processes from a translational perspective. To be precise, translation offers an epistemological perspective for us to interpret not only the artistic construction of the world/real but also multi-agent collaboration during/through art production. By doing so, we can gain a neoteric and fruitful understanding of artistic production through the lens of translation and, at the same time, form part of a new critical move to enhance the inter- or transdisciplinary nature of translation. As such, translaboration is not merely practically a “shared and united labor” (Mersmann 2020Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. Mersmann, Birgit 2020 “Photo-Translation: Collaborative Practice in Migration Image Research.” Target 32 (2): 191–216. , 196) in the process of art production but conceptually “a model of joint research between Translation Studies and areas of visual culture” (192). That is precisely how researchers from the wider field can benefit from the idea of translaboration.