Words and Colours: Translation and Correspondence as Collaboration: John Christie and Hans Jürgen Balmes in conversation

moderated by Christian Schmitt-Kilb

In an interview with the radio station Deutschlandfunk on the occasion of John Berger's death in January 2017, Hans Jürgen Balmes described Berger's philosophy as one that endearingly cares for things and the world. Caring is indeed a central term for Berger's being in the world. He widens it to envision forms of expression that make language care by bringing into intimacy every act, noun, event and perspective. Translation is one of the activities that Berger treats with extreme care, an activity that transcends the realm of language and cannot be reduced to direct renderings of meaning from one language into another. In I Send You This Cadmium Red, a book of correspondences on the theme of colour between John Christie and John Berger, Berger translates a patch of colour sent to him by John Christie; for him, it is "like a name you gave the light". Both the art of translation and thinking about colour are examples where Berger makes of binaries a more complex, a triangular affair by looking for the experiences that lie behind what we see, or read. In this context, it is crucial that Berger's works and thoughts are often the result of exchanges, conversations, correspondences with fellow artists and writers. In their conversation, Hans Jürgen Balmes and John Christie will share their collaborative experiences with John Berger on texts, films, paintings, and photos through many years of friendship and projects.

Hans Jürgen Balmes studied Comparative Literature in Bonn, published commentaries on German Romantic poets, was editor-at-large at S. Fischer in Frankfurt and co-editor of the literary magazine Neue Rundschau, and translates from the English, including works by John Berger, Robert Hass, W. S. Merwin, and Martine Bellen. Published The Rhine. Biography of a River in 2021.

John Christie is an artist and film-maker who collaborated on a number of book and film projects with John Berger over the course of their long friendship. He directed the four-part BBC series on photography, Another Way of Telling (1988)  with John Berger and Jean Mohr. In 1994 he published John Berger’s first book of collected poems, drawings and photographs, Pages of the Wound and in 2000 I Send You This Cadmium Red their book of correspondence on the theme of colour, involving artists books, letters, poems, drawings and paintings, was published. This was followed in 2016 by Lapwing and Fox a book of conversations with John Berger covering a wide range of subjects from art and artists to nature and place. At the moment, John Christie is working on the account of a visit in 2009, together with John Berger and two Benedictine nuns, to Notre-Dame-du-Haute, Le Corbusier’s famous pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp in eastern France.