Unitedstater

Unitedstater

Unitedstater
Intervention in several media platforms
The Netherlands, Mexico, Colombia
2015, 2017, 2019 and on-going-on

By using the term “American” to refer to the citizen of the United States, there is a risk of exclusion to the Americas in the northern, central and southern hemisphere of the continent. The term “estadounidense”, which is widely used in Spanish, does not yet have an official English translation to replace “American”.

Based on A Logo For America by Alfredo Jaar and as a continuation of Jaar’s initiative, this piece sends a proposal to the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries to promote the incorporation of the term “Unitedstater” to replace “American”. With this, it seeks to reflect on the fact that America is not a country but an entire continent.

Both Meriam Webster’s and Oxford Dictionaries responded that before adding a word, they need to see evidence that it is widely used in print and online. Their advice was to write to major local newspapers to promote the use of the term. Since that time the project has had three phases:

​2015: In Alicia Framis Studio, in front of the U.S. Consulate in Amsterdam, I presented the proposal in a dictionary format and the petitions to the Dutch newspapers, in the attempt to bring the term to life.

​2017: Then Excelsior Newspaper from Mexico published an article on it.

​2019: the term was added to Wikipedia,
but it only lasted for 4 days. It was torn down upon the idea that it attempted over the idea of the American Nation.

2020: a dataset shows where Wikipedia Editors come from

Metaprotesting Metaprotesting Metaprotesting Metaprotesting
Metaprotesting Metaprotesting

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