"I've always felt that languages occur in different areas of the body... English is very nasal, French is very throaty and Spanish is based in the stomach."Tanya Peixoto

Tertia Longmire studied sculpture and has made work in the form of artist books, performance and site specific installations, frequently working with or through text. Tanya Peixoto also studied sculpture and then later trained as a drama teacher. She taught for a number of years but has consistantly worked in the area of artist book editing and publishing, setting up her own small press, Magpie Press. She is fluent in English, French and Spanish. Longmire and Peixoto have worked together on a number of book projects including "The Table Leaks its Object" (1997), a prose transcription of all the messages, rumours and exclamations inscribed in a room full of school examination desks. Longmire has also shown this piece as an installation.

In 1999 Longmire and Peixoto were commissioned to do an artists' residency, as part of inIVA's five-year programme, with Acland Burghley school. Each year an artist has been placed in different subject areas, other that art. This was the fourth such collaboration and Longmire & Peixoto were chosen to work within Modern Languages with a yr 8 class.

"We removed the 'French class' and allowed the language of the classroom to erupt into the space..." Tertia Longmire

'UNTITLED: EVERYTHING/ANYTHING'
From the outset, the artists made it clear that they were not there to teach French. Instead, they wanted to explore all the possible meanings and values of the various languages and communication systems present within the classroom. This meant a leap of imagination for all concerned and the first few weeks were taken up with experimental exercises involving drawing, writing, photography, speech and performance, some activities admittedly more successful than others.

Describing the work "Untitled, cross piece" (1), Tertia said that it was sort of a mistake photograph but then later they enlarged it and copied it many times onto acetate, making the images transparent when displayed in a grid on the window. It suddenly had many different meanings - was it an 'x' or a plus sign? Was it kisses, was it crosses or stars or snowflakes?

Half way through term, the group made a trip to see the work of Italian Arte Povera artist Alighiero e Boetti at the Whitechapel Gallery. Here, the preliminary work done in class proved extremely valuable, helping the pupils to understand the artist's more conceptual concerns, as one pupil Peter commented "..you can have a completely different interpretation of something than another person will." The trip also proved a fruitful source of ideas, such as the everything/anything postcards (above left) - vivid 6x4 expressions of the concept 'everything'.

As they worked through different ideas and processes over the weeks, the classroom became a sort of performance space where anyone could contribute through gesture or utterance, or through the small silent scribbles left in the margin. Nothing was discarded for the whole term and when work re-emerged in the final classroom display, each child was represented somewhere within the collaborative work - "everything is everyone's" as James said. Often it was those children who seemed to have the most difficulty in French class, who ultimately gained the most from these alternative insights into language and communication.

Carly's 'Happy + Sad Book' (top) came right at the end of term. A meticulously drawn and constructed flip-book, it was based on the sytem of icons used in the school for validation and motivation - a happy face for good work or behaviour, a sad face for bad. At the start of the project, the artists had asked the children if they wanted to continue using this system. They overwhelmingly responded yes, this being a form of visual communication which was valued and shared amongst the whole group.

HIDDEN IN THE SMALL PRINT...
Tertia Longmire and Tanya Peixoto have explored the idea of language and translation in a very broad way, examining all the hidden messages and codes which sometimes pass unnoticed in the classroom and looking at how these different forms are valued, or not.

• What would you do or make, inspired by these artist's work?

• Very often, images are used to illustrate or confirm the accompanying text - in other words the pictures support the words. But the relationship between visual and verbal languages can be much more complex. Could you make a book which argues with itself, using images, words and textures?

• Using your full name as a starting point, how many different words or phrases can you extract? You might want to feed it through a 'spell check' to see what alternative versions you come up with, (for instance Robert Nesta Marley - Bob Marley - becomes Robert Nests Merrily). Now translate these into images, icons, graphics or doodles which represent the new version of you.

Tertia Longmire, Tanya Peixoto and 8 Fulham - (detail) from 'Scribble Drawing Series ' by Selina Begum, 1999.(5) )ONE M