Is a space for artistic research, experimentation and imagination. Set up by Bartels in an attempt to articulate and enclose the fringes in the scope of her artistic practice. To explore the absurd, bizarre, boring and (un)usual fascinations at a certain point in time. To dive into the potential of fragmentary bits an pieces, creating analogies between
concepts, questions and ideas. Blurring fiction and reality, where nothing is what it seems and vice versa.
Serious play or playful seriousness.
Schmilblique derived from Schmilblick
The Schmilblick is an imaginary object created by the French humorist Pierre Dac during the 1950s. It is absolutely useless, and can therefore be used for anything, being rigorously entire. Pierre Dac himself credits the brothers Jules and Raphaël Fauderche with its invention.
The word quickly became very popular in French language and was sometimes used as a synonym for thing or stuff, or something designating a strange or unknown object. Nowadays, this word is frequently used to refer to some limited help provided by someone to solve a difficult problem. The idiom is actually 'Faire avancer le schmilblick' (To make the schmilblick move/get ahead, literally). Also, advancing a subject.
Ouvroir | Faire avancer le schmilblick
is a space for artistic research, experimentation and imagination. To explore the absurd, bizarre, boring, the (un)usual. To dive into the potential of fragmentary bits an pieces, creating analogies between concepts, questions and ideas. Blurring fiction and reality, where nothing is what it seems and vice versa. Serious play or playful seriousness.
Set up by Karin Bartels in an attempt to articulate and enclose the fringes in the scope of her artistic practice.
Website in Process
It must have been around 2013 when Karin used google translate and copied by accident the text "Édith Piaf - La Vie en Rose" into the translation box. It offered het a fairly bizarre translation from French to English namely "Frank Sinatra - Life in Pink". Somehow there was a complete name and sex change within matters of seconds. Unfortunately Karin failed to make a screenshot of this occurrence at the time. She had never questioned if google translate would take popular or cultural references into account within a certain language.
Later she was in touch with someone from Germany who
wrote her an email in poor English. At some point in the email it said "Thursday I was in Seattle", which let to confusion, since all the other references clearly where talking about her hometown. It reminded her of the bizarre occurrence in google translate earlier. So she tried to write this sentence in German into the Google translate box. "Ich war donnerstag in venlo" and indeed it translated from German to English into "I was Thursday in Seattle". Her small hometown in the Netherlands suddenly became a city 6 times it's size in the USA. This time she made a screenshot of Google translate, Lost in Translation.
Today this translation is improved in google translate.
Thursday I was in Seattle, screenshot, Google translate, lost in translation
