Spring Snow − A Translation
Alison Turnbull (2002)
Spring Snow − A Translation is currently out of print.
Alison Turnbull takes Japanese author Yukio Mishima’s novel Spring Snow as a starting point to produce Spring Snow − A Translation, which is literally a visual translation ordered by colour. Drawing on Mishima’s evocative use of colour in the novel, Turnbull condenses the narrative into a colour palette. Working from the English edition, she isolates and orders each of the more than six hundred colours as they appear in the text − what emerges is a visual essay on the nature of translation.
In the introduction − which in turn is translated into Japanese − novelist Tony White creates a narrative remix of cut-ups from various sources, reflecting on Turnbull’s work and its relationship to the life and work of Kimitake Hiraoka, also known as Yukio Mishima.
