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October 16, 2012 – Review
Slavs and Tatars’s "Too Much Tłumacz"
Karol Sienkiewicz
In 1983, Czech writer Milan Kundera defined Central Europe as those states that historically and culturally belonged to the West, but had been politically assigned to the Eastern Bloc in the geopolitical wrangling of the Cold War. His notable essay “The Stolen West” (1983) accentuated the shared cultural heritage of the countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain and held a strategic value in defying communism. Today, over two decades after the fall of Berlin Wall and almost a decade after the European Union’s border shifted eastward, such designations sound woefully outdated. Yet the artistic collective Slavs and Tatars locate their geographical interest “east of the former Berlin Wall and west of the Great Wall of China.” Their first solo show in Warsaw is dedicated to linguistic complexities and what is lost (or gained) in translation. But what strategies lurk behind their approach?
In the center of the gallery stands a peculiar structure made of wood, a takhit, a type of furniture found in tea houses, kiosks, or restaurants across Central Asia. It resembles a bed, but lacks a mattress or upholstery and is covered instead with patterned rugs. Here it acts as a reading platform, with Slavs and Tatars’s …