First times do not exist. Translating and citing as relational practices of (re)use

Abstract

If we consider authorship to be part of a collective cultural effort, how can we invent a politics of sharing and re-use that is attentive to power differences, and does not buy into a universalist approach to openness? How can we develop practices of reuse that take into account that a universalist ”open” means different things in different contexts?

In conversation with translator Jennifer Hayashida, curator Nkule Mabaso and theoretician Cathryn Klasto, Eva Weinmayr and Femke Snelting attempt to rethink translation and citation as dispersed economies of re-use. Feeding, digesting, excreting, negotiating and transforming – citation and translation are knowledge ecologies where authorship is distributed, because a multiplicity of agents are at work to create a nutrient-rich milieu.

With the help of two practice examples, we ask: what would be the conditions for a relational practice of re-use ?