[no subtitles or album art] is the result of research into the subtitle as a link between sound and visual practices : unlike credits, subtitles are seen as optional, overlooked, making them very rarely utilized as graphic elements. I also think that their presence on the screen might even suggest that only words need be translated, as if images were universally intelligible. While the translation and installation of subtitles is an elementary practice, from both a contextual and cultural point of view, the situation is quite different when it comes to elevating them to the status of a living signifying object in a visual context.

I've been commissioned, along with three other artists, to put on a month-long exhibition, and in April therefore, it will be my turn. Nuance's curatorial objective is to highlight artists who are minorities in terms of gender, and who combine both sound and visual practices, so I, Queenie F. I went to the cinema with my friends to see a film in German - subtitles being the only way to make the connection between this language that we don't understand, or understand very little, and our understanding of the story. However, at one point there's a hubbub, or to be more precise, it's a drama in a teachers' lounge; at that point, in my ears, the words overlap, stretch and overwhelm each other to such an extent that I imagine that even for someone who speaks the language, the dialogue seems difficult to understand. Yet there is no information on the screen. It's impossible to decipher even snatches of conversation.

And then I get an idea. I imagine sentences going off in all directions. Different positions, different weights, sizes 12 and 30, missing letters, sentences that overlap one another to the point where, visually and graphically, there's a brouhaha.
So I started researching the subtitle. I read that the opposite had happened to the director Claire Denis, for her film Vendredi Noir; that while you can only hear the characters briefly through the window of a café, the subtitles, once the film has been translated, completely betray the nature of the dialogue. I understand that Claire Denis had asked for letters to be removed to symbolise this lack of audio information, but this was refused.

I also discovered that the practice of subtitling, just like typography, is so codified that it becomes untouchable. No more than 40 characters per line, no more than two lines per subtitle, no less than 2 seconds on screen.
I'm discovering that it's a self-taught practice, that online communities practice it all the time, and often on a voluntary basis. I realised that there are over 300 different subtitle file formats, and that many of them allow me, by editing lines of code, to customise them as I wish. Bingo, I'm making a nerd's business out of it, testing them, setting up an interface to use them, twisting them in all directions. I discovered that there are AIs that generate subtitles automatically. I felt the need to do something with it, graphically, but also contextually, proposing avenues (albeit artistic and distanced) of accessibility and reflection on our relationship with the link between image and language. The result was this exhibition, but I came away with the desire to continue this research and experimentation.

Thanks to Axel Laroudie, Jeremy Dunne, Nuance Records, Kaspar Ravel, Simon Magimel, friends who gathered at the opening, friends who played at there as well.