Julieanna Preston, When Words Won’t Work: Notes on performing the untranslatable, fieid: a free journal for architecture 2025 (forthcoming).
This essay delves into communication outside of spoken or written language between various material bodies in the context of five live art performances I created between 2011 and 2020 as part of a long-term project focused on apprehensions and interactions with other than human material bodies. The essay recollects Joseph Beuys’ performance work How to Explain a Picture to a Dead Hare to find synergies between that performance and my own performance practice, ultimately to expand what it is to converse with materials. As a response to this journal issue’s theme regarding acts of translation within creative practice research, When Words Won’t Work questions the value of explanation, a form of translation, to advocate for intuition, subjectivity and sensation in the use of small gestures, body movements, and vocal tones to replace the reason and legibility associated with textual exposition. journal contribution is presented in three interdependent parts: