This work is called 1880 THAT.
There is no plaque on the building where the Milan Conference took place. Kim and Mader have created a commemorative brick to contest the erasure of this pivotal moment in Deaf history.
Here, two of these bricks have been installed in the wall of the gallery. The bricks are a strong red terracotta colour. One side of the brick is stamped with the date 1880 and the other side of the brick stamped with the word THAT. The numerals and letters have been designed in a typeface called Dia - a contemporary design inspired by the early sans serif typefaces of the 1800s. The artists wanted to subtly make the point that although this event happened in the past it still affects the present.
The time of the Conference was defined by a Victorian understanding of manners, modesty and restrained expression. This goes some way to explain why sign language was viewed to be crude and immodest by people like Alexander Graham Bell and his contemporaries.
Another significant element of urban life in this era, especially in London, was the manufacturing and use of bricks. This led the artists to think about the significance of bricks as building blocks of cities but also to allude to the idea of the building blocks of language.
Bricks also appear in some other works in the exhibition.