ˈɑːbɪtəz
Vinícius Maffei featuring Call Mark Video Collective
2-channel video (13:29 min.), loop. Text and video composed of Collins Dictionary pronunciation clips, laminated printouts, chain, key ring
“Alphabet wrote culture e.g. dictionary dinosaur devil doll drunk and chauvinist.” This is an excerpt from the world of ˈɑːbɪtəz. Rooted in Maffei’s ongoing publishing practice Betraying Gestures, this work is a performance of the instability of language – its betrayals, its reinventions. Here, dictionary words (presented on a handout in their lexical form) are arranged into fragmented scripts that defy their original function. In reappropriating didactic, rigid English pronunciation clips produced by Collins’ Dictionary, Vinicius breaks language and invites us to embrace a new grammar.
In ˈɑːbɪtəz, Vinícius Maffei passes his words to Call Mark Video Collective to translate them into video. Through this deferral, the work shows us what happens when words enter the screen.
Call Mark Video Collective, known for its elusive, decades-long engagement with media histories, takes up Maffei’s words as raw material, reshaping them in the editing room. To do so, they rely on footage of the individuals tasked with communicating Collins Dictionary English to the world. Call Mark embraces Vinicius’ inventive narrative method and enlist the very actors who are tasked with the dictionary’s instruction: their bodies, words, and gestures now reconfigured to transmit new, Borgesian tales.
Vinícius Maffei (b. 1996, São Paulo) holds a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado. Through Betraying Gestures—a publishing affair shifting between publisher, novel, newsletter, subject, methodology—Vinícius writes not only as a constructive process but also as an informative one and publishes not only as an informative process but also as a constructive one. Vinícius is preoccupied with the iteration of publishing and writing in exhibitions, books, readings, and art book fairs, frequently collaborating with other artists, publishers, and spaces.
https://www.viniciusmaffei.com/
Call Mark Video Collective is a video collective based in San Diego, CA. Since the early 1980s, they have produced films, video installations, video art, collaborations, ads, events, performances, publications, etc. Across many years and members, what remains constant is its commitment to media critique, its desire for permeation, and—competing with that desire—its tendency toward fragmentation.
