ABSTRACTThis research project is concerned with ‘the untranslatable', which I identify as that which, in art, resists
translation into everyday language yet touches me lovingly and truthfully. Through a manner of ‘poetictranslation’ that is experiential and reflective as well as semantic and material, and by questioning how an artwork
can embody the untranslatable, the project develops concepts to think about the untranslatable and to articulate
its presence within an installation artwork that allows for new meanings to enter through audiences’ engagementwith the work. Informed by philosophical, theoretical and artistic works that share concerns with theoppositional and draw our awareness towards neutral, subtle and nuanced appearances and understandings of
the world, the research investigates the poetic works of art that liberate and provoke our perception and sense ofbeing in this life-world.
The research is undertaken through my experiencing and reflecting on these elements: my grandmother’s poetic
enunciation about Mt. Aso, shifting shadows of an acrylic cube (a remnant), and Jacques Derrida’s interpretationof chora and ma as a place for translation/transference, which is untranslatable. This process, which in turn draws
resonant voices from various disciplines, not limited to either Western or Eastern knowledge, to ancient orcontemporary time, to one side or one sex, is manifested in my art-making and thesis writing; my artworks
inspire and test my thesis, together investigating these five key concepts: ‘Pure Language’, the ‘Poetic’, ‘Shadow’,‘Transference’ and ‘Embodiment’.
Chapter One explores philosophies of translation with a focus on Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘pure language’considered untranslatable. My first installation work Understanding of misunderstanding, joins images of different
landscapes in a manner akin to literal translation of my grandmother’s enunciation. Chapter Two discuses ‘poetic
use of language’ as articulative of the ineffable (untranslatable), through elaboration on Friedrich Hölderlin’s
theory of poetry, Toshihiko Izutsu’s philosophy of Zen articulation, and Luce Irigaray’s philosophy of linguistic
and psychoanalytic practice. My video work, Topologies between the Three, poetically translates conversations aboutMt. Aso by opening silent and metaphoric spatiality between expression and perception. Informed byintersecting studies on elusive appearance and perceptual ambiguity in philosophies of translation andperception, Chapter Three examines shifting ‘shadow’ (image) as an artistic medium, exemplified and discussed
in art, including works by Agnes Martin and Junichiro Tanizaki. In my installation works, Distancing for Opening,
Watakushi ame and Mokudoku, ‘shadow light/light shadow’ visually and spatially transfers across images faintly
printed or surfaces embossed with the acrylic (a remnant). Chapter Four articulates the ‘transfer’ process as theembodiment of the untranslatable, inspired by the Greek-Latin and the Japanese derivations, illustrating the‘transfer’ (utsuru). In this process, the positive is engendered from the negative, which is aligned with art historicaland philosophical views that images metamorphose and knowledges transform in ‘distance’ or ‘movement’between the works and the spectators. In response to Derrida’s interpretation, my final exhibition, ここがどこなのか_ where it is here_どうでもいいことさ_it does not matter_どうやって来たのか_how I have got here_忘れられるかな_can I forget,

intends to open ‘a poetic place’, with my built walls and visual works, where images transfer (utsuru: reflect,project, trace, emerge) within rooms (ma) through audiences’ experience and reflection. This is captured in thefilm, The Untranslatable, A Poetic Place, shot through the gazes of others, in keeping with how my grandmother’senunciation ‘transfers’ the life of Mt. Aso. The chapter further elaborates on this life as what conveys knowledge(sensitivity) of ‘love and longing for motherhood’, in the light of the Mirokubosatsu statue clad with nuance ofshadow as in love, Rainer Maria Rilke’s articulation about life and longing, and philosophical claims that chora isboth motherhood and untranslatable. Chapter Five articulates one’s experience of ‘embodiment’ of theuntranslatable as temporal, receptive and generative, in reference to other bodies and words: my grandmother,
Mirokubosatsu, hokahi (containing utsu: hollowness and emptiness) and the Chinese ideogram of poetry 詩 (wordtemple, latently filled with chant or shadow), and through proximate examination of the female artist’s body(mine). My video work, Gesture of Shadow, externally captures metamorphosis of her shadow from a mountain toa butterfly. The excerpts of my journal writing, during the final research residency, witness a temporaltransference of something external (hoka) into her body, anticipating its emergence as a birth of art.

As anyone struggles with that which resists translation in art, The Untranslatable, a Poetic Place, is written forboth artists and audiences. Within the context of this thesis, ‘the untranslatable’ can be best defined as the lifethat drifts as it metamorphoses and transforms our experience in and reflection on the world in a more rich andpoetic manner. As it ‘transfers’ in variant ways, it can only be embodied temporarily by the poetic work of art; ina poetic language that contains ‘fertile silence’, an architectural body that internalises emptiness/hollowness, or an
enduring form of love that longs for motherhood. This embodiment is perceived and experienced as ‘shadow
light’ (as truthful, an aid to knowledge) that shifts; an ambiguous image that shimmers; a nuance of love thattrembles; or a poetic place that opens.