To Act, To Know, To Be, a solo exhibition by Ella McCartney of works made during an Artist Residency in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck College, University of London, in collaboration with Professor Zhu Hua and supported by The Leverhulme Trust. Fuelled by an interest in gesture, process and translation, the works have been created in response to current research on ‘translanguaging’, a new way of understanding the meaning-making process.
‘For me, translanguaging is both going between different linguistic structures and systems, including different modalities (speaking, writing, signing, listening, reading, remembering) and going beyond them. It includes the full range of linguistic performances of multilingual language users for purposes that transcend the combination of structures, the alternation between systems, the transmission of information and the representation of values, identities and relationships. The act of translanguaging then is transformative in nature; it creates a social space for the multilingual language user by bringing together different dimensions of their personal history, experience and environment, their attitude, belief and ideology, their cognitive and physical capacity into one coordinated and meaningful performance, and making it into a lived experience. I call this space ‘‘translanguaing space’’, a space for the act of translanguaging as well as a space created through translanguaging.’ (Li Wei (2011) Moment analysis and translanguaging space: discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5), pp 1222-1235
The exhibition will include a three- hour sound track and a live performance with Amy Harris and Ruby Embley on Friday 10th March 6-9pm and Saturday 3pm.

'To Act To Know To Be' is one research output made during a Leverhulme Artist in Residency in the Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication, Birkbeck, University of London.
The publication of the exhibition includes contributions from Alice Hattrick and Jonathan Miles, interviews with Gemma Grainger, National Specialist Coach, The Football Association. Including creative translations by Professor Zhu Hua, Daria Jankowicz-Pytel, Bojana Petrić and Li Wei.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/21621