the full title for this work reads: Wall Text, Translated Working/Translated Work: Barbara fisherman 1990-2006

It's the first work the visitor encounters when entering the exhibition Vertaalde Werken/Translated Works, Barbara Visser 1990-2006.
A work presenting itself as exhibition infrastructure, and written (originally in Dutch) by the educational staff of the museum at the artists' request, then translated (or something resembling translation) by Babel Fish, one of the the first internet translation tools of which the name, not by accident, could be a pun on the name Barbara Visser too. 

One of the main principles of this exhibition was to play with the act of exhibiting itself, and the communication around it. The wall text (as such) was an indispensible example of the language that most museum exhibitions use. As one of the conventional means to introduce an audience into the life and work of an artist, the visitor accepts, sometimes hopes, that by this knowledge their gaze will be directed. By using the rough translation of Babel Fish, form and content of the text separated themselves for the reader. Other examples of meta-exhibiting revolved around the name tages for the works: rather than making them 'invisible' the text was a visual element in the space: A-4 sized pages with a large font torn out of the guide accompanying the show, and glued onto the wall. 

Exhibited

Vertaalde Werken/Translated works, Barbara Visser 1990-2006 Museum de Paviljoens, Almere, design by Laurenz Brunner.

Dan Walwin curated an ultra-short show called Slops on June 21st and 22nd, 2025, where we showed "Wall Text" in the state I had photographed it during the deinstallment of the exhibition Vertaalde Werken/ Translated Works, Barbara Visser 1990– 2006 in 2007.