Joe Milutis is a writer, media artist, and Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington-Bothell. His interdisciplinary work includes experimental sound and radio; video works; new media; experimental narrative and poetics; theoretical writings; and various media and literature hybrids. He is the author, most recently, of Failure, A Writer’s Life and Bright Arrogance, a column on experimental translation at Jacket2. His writing has also appeared in Fence, Triple Canopy, Cabinet, Film Comment, Hyperallergic and Ctheory.
Authors | Joe Milutis
Articles on Amodern by Joe Milutis
TRANSLATIONAL GRANULARITY
What is the relation of translation to transmission? How does mechanical reproduction introduce the possibility of a translation that goes beyond alphabetism, into the realms of image and noise? As we see in W. G. Sebald’s use of Xeroxes, the granularity of a text, a form of utter specificity, is a sign of its existential untranslatability and an indication of the totality of mutation. This translational materiality neither requires dogmatic postmodernism, nor a return to presumably “humanist” bromides about fidelity to a text’s meaning. Rather, an embrace of the imperfection inherent in a text’s transmission and reproducibility allows for a kind of superfidelity to the constantly shifting ground of translation.