From the blurb for An Anthology of Asemic Handwriting (2013) edited by Tim Gaze and Michael
Jacobson we read:
An Anthology of Asemic
Handwriting is the first book-length publication to collect the
work of a community of writers on the edges of illegibility. Asemic writing is
a galaxy-sized style of writing, which is everywhere yet remains largely
unknown. For human observers, asemic writing may appear as lightning from a
storm, a crack in the sidewalk, or the tail of a comet. But despite these
observations, asemic writing is not everything: it is just an essential
component, a newborn supernova dropped from a calligrapher's hand. Asemic
writing is simultaneously communicating with the past and the future of
writing, from the earliest undeciphered writing systems to the xenolinguistics
of the stars; it follows a peregrination from the preliterate, beyond the
verbal, finally ending in a postliterate condition in which visual language has
superseded words.
In the simplest of terms,
Asemic writing is writing in any media made of undecipherable invented symbols
or glyphs, or illegible, unreadable, or incomprehensible calligraphic-like or
cursive-like writing or griffonage. It consists of works resembling some kind
of writing system or handwriting located “on the edges of illegibility,” doubly referring to the writers or
artists themselves practising it and the product of that practice.
The first question that
arises in this case is why do these poets and artists producing such work? And
how should we read them if the grammatological or calligraphic marks or forms
they come in are unreadable? How do we read something made of deliberately unreadable
or unknown words, language, symbols, or markings? What is the implication of
this artistic statement in general to our concepts of language and writing?
As Asemic art works are visual and material representations of writing,
they are often associated to Visual Poetry in general. However, Asemic writing
has a restricted thematic: “unreadable” writing. Only the absence of accessible
meaning on the level of the glyphs or griffonage or longhand forces us to look
instead at how they look and how they are made or what they are made of (as
picture, process, and material). It
would be a different kind of reading process, something we are not in the habit
of making in formal literary terms, but an activity we often in fact engage in
when we read visual and material cues, like in the expression “reading clues”
or “reading people” or reading nonverbal or body language. Thus, we do
perform other modes of reading outside of language in the strict linguistic
sense. Everyday, we are playing the role of the detective. Approaching Asemic
writing will just need some skill in art criticism and history, some knowledge
of writing or grammatological systems, a practical background in graphic
design, an intuitive grasp of cultural proxemics and bibliographical or
literacy codes, some basic acquaintance with the history of the Human Sciences
and 20th century critical theory, and a familiarity with the human body.
There is, perhaps, only one thing you won’t need: the dictionary and the grammar
of the real living or dead languages you have and haven’t learned. We would
need to take out something else, too, something which we could call the “transcendental”
or ahistorical Code or Ground of reading.
To commence a preliminary
demonstration of how our detective might go about “reading” an unknown script
or an indecipherable scribbling, I would deploy two terms: “altersign” and “intersign.”
The first is my coinage to refer to clearly drawn but fully invented
“meaningless” glyphs; the second comes from Michael Rinaldo, in his unpublished
doctoral work, Breaking the Letter:
Illegibility as Intersign in Cy Tombly, Steve McCaffery, and Susan Howe
(2013), referring to markings which are neither writing nor drawing, hovering
between scriptural and pictorial status. Two more terms to complement the first
pair: positive and negative composition. These are not opposites but are simply
“tendencies” of composition: the first emphasizes the forming of legible but
unknown glyphs, the second the deforming of legible scripts to produce
illegible marks which hover between a likeness to writing and to drawing. The
“entities” we will often encounter in Asemic writing come as either invented
forms never meant to be “read” on their
own terms, or appearing as neither scriptural nor pictorial elements.
Like Visual Poetry to which
it is marginally associated, Asemic writing comprises a wide spectrum of
practices in terms of the media and procedures employed. It can be born “analog” or
“digital” or can use material coming from these two media technologies. For
example, a digitally-born design could be printed on paper, which in turn
becomes material for an abstract asemic collage using magazine cut outs and
found objects, then overlaid with calligraphic paint or ink tracings. In
principle, there is no limit to the material density or complexity of the work
like in any form of plastic or verbal art. It all depends on the evolution of
the work, the preferences of the artist, and the various logistical and
economic aspects of production. Nevertheless, while “formal” and visual
poetries are flexible with their themes or subjects, Asemic is not. The subject
of Asemic writing is writing itself in its “proto-semantic” (McCaffery)
embodiments in various grammatological, material, and even gestural dimensions.
This doesn’t mean that Asemic works cannot include non-grammatological items or
even regular elements of known languages. The main distinction is that the
focus of the piece is the “xenography” which can be either the sole element of
the work or placed beside non-xenographic items for whatever purpose the work
may want to accomplish in both aesthetic and philosophical terms.
As introduction to the “positive” process
of producing the Asemic, let’s start with the Chinese artist Xu Bing’s famous
asemic text, Tiānshū (translated as A Book from the
Sky but which is
better rendered Nonsense Writing
according to Wu Hung). In this work in four-volume book format of 604 pages
(see Plate 1), Xu Bing invented 4,000 meaningless Chinese characters. The
unreadable “Chinese” characters were printed following traditional wood types
hand-carved by the artist himself who said that he “spent four years of his
life making something that says nothing.”
Grammatologically, Tiānshū follows the
“metalogics” (see Johanna Drucker) of the Chinese writing system (reading
direction, letterform style and sizes, page layout) and for a non-Chinese,
would appear like legitimate Chinese calligraphic scripts. For Rinaldo, however, this
will not count as an example of the illegible, even though it is asemic,
because of the sharp and well-drawn nature of the notations or letterforms.
Since I am not a trained Sinologist, I am confining myself to simply pointing
out both the inventive nature of Xu Bing’s 4,000 “Chinese” characters and their
legible, even traditional, embodiment as instances of altersigns.
As another instance of grammatological
inventiveness, Michael Jacobson’s glyphs in his “visual novella” called The Giant’s Fence (see Plate 2) follows
the same procedure as Xu Bing’s. Jacobson, who begins his work using
“pen-and-paper sketches” using “automatic writing or [snatching] a shape from
the surrounding environment” and then moves on to “[developing] complexity,”
says his works represent the
Attempts to push written,
symbolic communication to the breaking point and create a sort of
"trans-symbolism," that is, signs transcending symbolic
communication....
Usually the
signs begin as recognizable symbols that, through subsequent generations,
become abstract designs whose origin eventually becomes obscure even to myself,
the creator of the piece (2013).
Like Xu Bing, Jacobson draws inspiration
from known writing systems of the world. Jacobson, however, takes his
inspiration from a system that is not his own. Apart from deriving The Giant’s Fence’s influences from
Easter Island’s Rongorongo scripts, Jacobson also gets his ideas from illegible
graffiti and sigils. (The choice of grammatological allusions can also be seen
as a significant conscious or subconscious stylistic ideology of the other, the
foreign, or the unknown.) Jacobson does not have a fixed normative or prescriptive
method for “reading” Asemic works:
One must have an explorer's
spirit to interpret asemic texts. They aren't bound by anything except the
limits of one's imagination. I also think asemic texts offer readers access to
the author's raw life experience. Because the text is undecipherable, an asemic
author is likely to put down thoughts and emotions that don't exist in standard
written communication. What the reader does with this nexus of communication is
entirely up to him or her. I recommend "reading" an asemic text in
various places, in various orders, and in various contexts so the glyphs can
interact with the environment and always seem fresh (2013).
The modulation
toward authorial affects or experience as reading components can be seen as a
skeuomorph of older poetic paradigms. These older models can be deployed in the
reading or making of the work if one wishes, but Jacobson cautiously tempers
this with suggestions of conducting nonlinear readings.
A possible approach for such “positive”
types of Asemic creation/production is to see how other aspects of
communication or media technology in both their material and ergonomic aspects
remain in force. The four basic elements of communication media technology
(Hand, Tool, Pigment, and Surface) are all combined in various ways but always
in a tension with the scaffolding afforded by our understanding of how to
navigate the directionality of scripts or glyphs both as part of known writing
systems and as elements of the page or the book (their “metalogics”). Even
though the linguistic and poetic codes we are used to expecting are not
available (or suggested to be not available), other extraneous codes or
background knowledge are retained (on the legible “side” of the edge). For
example, the Giant’s Fence still
respects alignments and baselines even though we are not given which reading
directionality to follow. The tightly-bound almost vine-like ramification of
the manuscript precluded any free placement and followed a disciplined page
printing grid like Xu Bing’s text. The ligatures that create the flow of
“units” (since a bias makes us look for discrete parts) evoke the abstract mode
of handwritten hieroglyphics. The widespread absence of kerning makes it
difficult to ascertain the boundaries of letterforms in the way we are used to
in the current Roman alphabet typographical system. Jacobson’s asemic glyphs,
however, do remind me of the old classical Greek and Latin style of continuous
script without spacing, up or down casing, and punctuations called the Scriptio continua.
In an age of standardized machine-cut
typefaces and fonts, Jacobson’s abstract semi-pictorial continuous script
carries the “aura” of a pre-modern, non-Western society. To assume or impose
such an aura on the Jacobsonian manuscript may imply a nuance of Romantic
primitivism or a critique of standardized, streamlined typography and its
corollary myth of communicative transparency or modernist efficiency, and this
we achieve just by inferring from our basic or background knowledge of writing
systems (or grammatological typology) around the world. There appears to be
some consistency in the scriptural notational style but it will take a rigorous
image analysis to determine if there are even discrete letterforms or cursive
cycles that repeat in a regular pattern or rhythm in the whole book. That is,
we are not certain if there are even alphabetical units at all. We can add more
grammatological or graphetical technicalities in this “extrinsic reading,” but
I wanted only to sketch a demonstration of how an approach to Asemic xenography
can be pursued.
These readings, then, would like to
deploy a “grammatologist” approach (in the pre-Derridean and, later on,
Derridean strands) conjointly with others such as bibliography or graphic
design which emphasize the pragmatic materiality of the work. Certainly,
relevant concepts can be marshalled whenever helpful in the elucidation of the
dynamics invoked by the Asemic piece at hand. As Jacobson has said, in the end
it is up to readers to decide what to make of it, yet with the proviso of the
avoidance of the closure of meaning since the very choice of inventing unknown
glyphs already prompts us that the focus is not on whatever the scripts may
mean lexically or hermeneutically, an approach which has become impractical
given the presumed absence or non-availability of the scriptural system’s
inherent code. Instead, the bracketing off of the code deflects our attention
toward the literally “extrinsic” aspects of the asemic artefact and toward our
assumptions about navigating a writing system as a historically and culturally
bound pragmatic convention modulated by the affordances of media technology
embodiment. I will reserve the discussion of the details of these “extrinsic”
approaches in another section.
Unfortunately, I will need to
discuss three more Asemic pieces because showing only one or two works cannot
possibly represent the whole range of artistic possibilities of Asemic writing
and the general and case-specific approaches to various oeuvres. Let me give an
example this time of a work that uses the “negative” processes of producing the
illegible following the restrictions made by Rinaldo in his work. Using the
poet/artist bpNichol’s distinction between “dirty” and “clean” in Visual and
Concrete Poetry, we can say that Xu Bing and Jacobson’s legible yet asemic
glyphs printed sharply and neatly in black and white are examples of the latter
type. Adding more elements via collage and palimpsest multiplies the layers of
the page or frame and raises the graphic and material density of the work. When
an element that we cannot classify unambiguously as either scriptural,
pictorial, or even sculptural is present on the display surface, then we have
what Rinaldo calls an “intersign.” For him, this is the signature of the
illegible:
Illegibility… functions intersemiotically in a
way that is harder to define: it mediates between textuality and pictoriality
without being unambiguously determinable as either icon or text through notational
decipherment. And it is this suggestiveness in textual illegibility of both
icon and text that eludes precise formulation. While not textually legible, an
illegible mark could still evoke writing qua fragmented or effaced sign. In
turn, textual illegibility could additionally suggest pictoriality when
inferable as partially abstracted image of a text. (This is the case
sometimes when textual objects are incorporated within the
three-dimensional world of a perspective painting.) If a mark is unambiguous
and legible in at least one sign system, then it ceases to be an intersign in
the same way a textually illegible mark would.
There are many ways to
accomplish this. An example would be in the often used palimpsestic
illegibility similar to what we can see in Charles Bernstein’s "Veil"
(see Plate 3). Situated between concrete poetry and asemic art, this production
from Charles Bernstein conveys the material thickness of writing where
scriptural forms attain depth and weight, shade and texture through the
stratification of textual sediments. As one machine-cut Roman letter gets piled
on top of another, the white spacing that allowed them to function as discrete
typographical units give way to shadow as the differences among glyphs get
dissolved by the sheer weight of the marks it supported. The text as textus has literally become opaque,
creating a grainy textscape wall which hangs between sign and image, meaning
and matter. The sheer verbosity of machine-cut signifiers does not lead to more
meaning but to the occultation of their own form as sharply legible
standardized glyphs. Dirty, concrete, illegible, and asemic, the “Veil” retains
the vestiges of typewriterly alignment and even retains anglo-lexical
“survivors” in a Courier-like typeface at the ragged-right end or edge of the
page/frame/surface. Still legible, they have nevertheless become marginal forms
beside the vast illegible static screen of the ink wall. By not opting for an
asemic graphism that simulates xenography, the “Veil” hits much closer to home
by morphing the standardized forms of the writing system we know very well so
illegibly that we can no longer read or even recognize them via the modes of
verbal and visual literacy we have practiced for a long time as our intimate
cultural capital and habitus.
Another example that should
fall under Rinaldo’s intersign is Peter Ganick’s “Notes toward infinity - theory
of the scribble - theory of the scrawl” (see Plate 4). Ganick is a prolific
writer and poet, producing volumes of work running into thousands of pages. I
wanted to discuss this type of Asemic work to provide an idea of the radical
range of Asemic writing. We won’t think of the term “calligraphy” or “graffiti”
as applicable even in the most abstract mode or manifestation, not even of
longhand scripts like signatures. It is not called “scrawl” for no reason. But
setting that beside “infinity” makes us think (paradoxically) of the absence of
fixed frames of reference and how that takes away basically all notions, all
thoughts, all measures, all directions. Since thought-less, it is also
sign-less. There seems to be a halted attempt at some illegible words scribbled
on the lower left hand corner, and helps to give the page some sort of initial
alignment. Yet, the chaotic mass of long, heavy, light, jagged, curved, wavy,
thin, thick, crooked, zigzag, winding, and generally errant lines don’t seem to
converge or diverge anywhere. Over all, no writing system we know of is
definitely alluded to. No image in the iconic or pictorial sense of the word
can be made out. We can’t even pretend that it is an artist’s preliminary
sketch.
Yet in spite of the seeming
chaos, we can see a hint of a subtly placed center, even if we can’t find where
the scrawling motion begins or ends. The margins are respected, as if there was
still a center of gravity keeping the wandering scribbler from leaving the page
entirely. We cannot even compare it to atomic collision marks which never
hesitate in their ineluctable paths despite being governed by chance. We can’t
compare it to automatic writing whose strokes are too unconsciously decisive,
too feverish, and frenetic. We sense a trembling, shaky, tracing movement, the
hand barely holding the tool well enough to execute decisive or bold strokes.
The scrabbly marks don’t coordinate sufficiently to gather themselves into a
definite form or loop, or huddle into a glyph beyond the erratic tangle of
lines. The hand writing seems to be refusing to hold the pen upright, reminding
me of Maurice Blanchot’s (1969) notion of “weariness” in The Infinite Conversation, communicating the fact and act of
writing/language as “the truth of weariness, a weary truth.”
In general, the weary,
directionless lines of Ganick’s piece can be contrasted to the longhand in
Vincenzo Accame’s “Récit” (see Plate 5) where the strokes are determined, purposeful, single-minded, and looks much more
“normal” than Plate 4’s aimless scribbles. As another species of the intersign,
Accame’s closely-huddled handwriting is illegible and from a good distance can
seem like a forest. The white triangular gaps that cut through abruptly are so
geometrically sharp, like roads dividing the landscape, that they fragment the
intended continuity of the handwriting field (organic vs. inorganic motif). The
scissor-like gaps disable the cohesion of the “récit” (story),
divide language from itself, and reinforce the separation of signifiers from
signifieds that feeds back into the illegible form of the handwriting as handwriting and not as systemic, or
cursive, or grammatological signs. Furthermore, the diagonal orientation of the
triangular slices runs against the usual x and y axes of print page layout or
gridding, as if it were a new axis z, a third dimension cutting through the
gray matter of the text as a disruptive dynamic. We can also make the
observation that the opposition between the slopes and strokes of the cursive
style and the rectilinearity of the diagonal gaps could be regarded as the
difference between human and artificial or machinic technological footprint in
media technology. It is possible, then to employ such binaristic rhetoric
following the graphics layout of the work itself. A grammatological notion can
therefore be complemented by graphic design “grammars” as well as bibliographic
conventions in this multimodal “extrinsic” and literal approach toward Asemic
writing.
Even if there are radically undecipherable
glyphs, illegible cursives, and dysgraphic markings, the five Asemic plates
still depended on the bibliographic orientation of the Page as compositional
field. Apart from Ganick’s landscape mode, the other four are in the portrait
mode. The ergonomic function of the “standard” implied observer is conserved in
all cases except Jacobson’s which can be rotated 90 or 180 degrees without
seemingly violating page-viewing orientation. The only purely horizontal baseline
in Accame’s “Récit” is strategically located at the
bottom of the frame, serving as the ergonomic clue for viewing orientation. The
cursive in his piece also would not look “correct” if rotated by 90 or
180 degrees, given the undulating baseline of the slopes and strokes dictating
the position of the loops on the ascender portion above the typographic “mean”
line. Even Ganick’s piece, with its multidirectional and weary non-cursive
lines, leaves something for ergonomic orientation: the fragmentary cursive on
the lower left corner and the nascent but obscured or abandoned Cartesian grid
are “forensic” clues to the orientation of the page. Thus, even if the
linguistic or poetic codes are bracketed off in a way analogous to Husserl’s epoché, other extraneous codes are
invoked, including principally, inevitably, or inviolably the implied presence
of the viewer as a phenomenological constant without whom the pragmatic process
of a global semiosis will not even begin.
The “improvisational” (in Michael Borkent’s
sense) demonstration I made here are sketches of a possible multimodal approach
using “extraneous” grammatological, graphetical, bibliographic,
phenomenological, ergonomic, pragmatic, or cultural codes logically called for
by being in front of an unknown graphic (ambiguously pictorial and scriptural)
artefact and in the absence of the (transcendental, intrinsic, or metaphysical)
formalist poetic or linguistic codes which Asemic writing precludes by
definition. We may not have words we can recognize, but reading does not just
center on words but also on other types of relationships. A “paralingual
poetics” (or “postlinguistic,” following Borkent’s terminology) such as Asemic
writing partakes of our shared era of reading without the benefit of timeless codes
formerly imagined to “inhabit” an artistic artefact or the chambers of the
human mind (cf. Michael Reddy on the “conduit” metaphor of communication). The
exploration of these paralinguistic codes would lead to a different type of
“extrinsic” approach in a more literally
literal direction. The “scanning” technique would also need to take into
account the unique assembly aspects that each Asemic piece represents and must
be open to experiment with the specific direction the detailed interpretation
will take, adopting new tools or modifying them as the particular case
requires. This is simply extending into the reading practice the operational
logic of any Art which demands a constant re-vision of our ways of seeing.
List of Plates
__________________________________________________________________________________
Old entry:
1. The asemic is a dynamic, unstable category. Something can be asemic to
a lot of people, but how can we tell that it will still be to someone else in the future or in a different situation? What can be "absolutely" asemic is an open question. What is asemic may end up becoming meaningful to someone later on. However, we should qualify this by saying that asemic writing primarily refers to two conditions: first, a suspicion holds that a given specimen belongs to or instantiates a sign or writing system; second, that this "system" is inaccessible or unknown in an absolute way. Specimens of asemic writing are indeed given "second-order" meaning (as a style in art, for example), and "asemic" has its own definition, but this is all happening in a sign system (English) that is external to the sign system suspected to be used in a specimen of asemic writing. Even the
intentional production of asemic art or writing does not "betray" its asemic nature. The question then becomes: How is it possible for anyone already possessing a language to produce something in another "projected" or "imagined" sign system where the producer pretends to have no access? Isn't asemic writing a species of fantasy? And, therefore, not so dissimilar from other fantasies of language?
2. The term is basically limited to any marking that has the semblance of writing. It is not normally applied to objects. For example, what would an "asemic table" be, or an "asemic pillow?" Thus, the qualifier "asemic" is something used in conjunction with nouns such as art, painting, writing, etching, drawing, text, postcard, poem, etc. In short, it is mainly an artifact that contains or carries
a semblance to some kind of writing or language.
3. Any object or sets of objects could be treated as writing if there is enough number of them set in some kind of pattern that could have a semblance to some kind of language, writing, or sign system. Again, this is dependent on who reads. For schizophrenia, anything at all can have a pattern. But it would be another step to see a pattern as some form of writing, and more to say which one is asemic (unknown system) and which one is readable. (Here, as elsewhere, I use the term "system" irresponsibly and loosely as a kind of network of relationships whose boundaries are not easy to fix or define. Any system must necessarily be open or has "interface" capabilities. If not, it would be super-insulated and isolated, fully autonomous and self-enclosed, like a "monad" that has no doors or windows. Enclosed this way, a system will become fully unreadable or untranslatable, an enigma.)
4. The key to labelling something as asemic or not depends on
an assumption of the presence of a "system" to which something asemic
supposedly belongs. This system must also be deemed "artificial"
enough. Rain erosion marks on a wall, for instance, is hard to categorize as
asemic writing or art. They can be considered "found" art or
"natural" art. Yet, since no obvious and deliberate attempt was made
to continually control the flow and development of the markings, they don't
fall under "writing." What we call "natural" languages have
enough artificiality in them that we don't see them as similar to rain marks or
geological flow marks on rocks or landscapes. (The "water" flow marks
on Mars, for example.) Languages are only called "natural" to
distinguish them from systems that are known to have been deliberately created.
Examples are constructed, formal, and computer languages. This distinction does
not imply superiority for any category: "(T)he limited size and
short-lived nature of artificial languages are probably the only things that
sets them apart from natural languages, since all languages are artificial insofar
as they are conventional" (Wikipedia). Like other sign systems,
"natural" languages become extinct, too.
5. Asemic art or writing cannot be absolutely accidental, or
else it won't be "writing." Asemic writing is a marking that is
assumed to be a part of an unknown sign system, not a foreign language or an
ancient language that just needs deciphering. Secondly, it is also assumed to
have some "intelligence" in it that remains undiscovered or
irrecoverable. This is what sets it apart from natural processes or accidental
marks. A gash on the paint of a car may be interpreted as an evidence of a
minor collision, but is not considered to be a specimen of writing. It is
simply "forensic" evidence.
6. The borderline that delimits the moment when any marking whatsoever can become asemic writing is not easy to draw. First, any mark must become writing or resemble some instance of a sign system at work. The annular rings in trees are natural markings but are not considered writings. They represent the "forensic" evidence of the age of trees, each ring being translated into one year in the human time system. It cannot be "asemic" as long as it is given a scientific meaning.
7. Asemic writing may not contain a recoverable meaning, but it does carry a "forensic" meaning. The fact that anything can be given the term "asemic writing" tells us that whatever artifact it is, we can recognize it, categorize it, talk about it, point to it. These are all acts of meaning. Even if asemic writing as a specimen can be categorized in a system that has meaning, it is itself not a part of that system but of another presumed system of signs. It is asemic because the system that can help us read it is missing, unknown, or irrecoverable. Hence, no translation work is possible. It is in this respect that
the tactical value of asemic writing comes to the forefront: it mutes the Semantic and emphasizes the inscrutable form or material or process of the writing gesture. Executed consciously, the asemic is produced,
a contrario, in itself bearer of unknown meaning, but tagged and moving within a horizon supposedly active with meaning.
8. Hence, when we say "asemic writing," we actually presume the presence of
two systems of signs that have no natural or accidental origins: what we use to categorize a specimen as "asemic writing," and another in which the specimen is written or coded. Apart from these two systems, we must also assume the presence of others that are not considered to be writing systems:
natural processes and
accidents. These two realms are not asemic because of science and "forensic" methods of reading. They are not "writing" since they are not sign systems themselves. Instead, sign systems "read" them and give them their own kind of systematicity expressed in formulae or some other jargon. The natural world and the universe are not sign systems, despite the fact that a formal language or jargon like mathematics has been made and is used to describe them. A table doesn't become linguistic just because I call it a "table," but it does become part of a whole context in which we move and live. Maybe a way to phrase it is to say that a table is part of a system of objects and it intersects with another system (that of signs) when we call it "table."
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| Automatic writing by Bruno Leyval |
9. Only in divination can accidents and natural events act as
"messages" from the gods, or as forms of writing. Forced to consider
nature and accidents as "messages," I can only admire the diviner's
access to the system of writing that I don't have, which transforms nature into
an asemic language whose words and meaning completely escape me. "Automatic
writing" can also produce scribblings whose illegibility can be considered
asemic, unless assigned a meaning via supernatural or psychological
interpretations. These are only two examples where asemic instances get
transformed into signifying artifacts. A third example would be superstitions.
Just look at the following quotes and the amazing way insignificant
coincidences or accidents in nature are given meaning:
Three butterflies on a leaf are unlucky.
Two crows flying together from left is bad luck.
Birds at a window bring bad news.
A robin tapping on window brings bad news.
When a lizard crosses your path, the day will not be a happy
one.
(http://naturemeanings.blogspot.com/2012/01/divination-in-nature-luck-proverbs.html)
The logic behind superstitions can sometimes be traced back to old beliefs and narratives; sometimes, the logic or the system behind them can just be completely unknown.
10. Between natural and accidental events and asemic writing, we can place the work of Otto Zitko, described as
calligraphic expressions of non-literal writing (Herbert Lachmayr). Everything looks like wounding, spiralling, entangling lines traced or scrawled all over walls and canvasses, moving across all borders between spaces traditionally aligned with objects of the "real" world, and spaces we restrict to representational media like the canvas. The key concept here is the term "non-literal writing." This is both writing and not writing, or neither any of the two, and yet "calligraphic" in execution. In this case, we can say that we are no longer in the same situation where we are confronted with the assumption of the presence of two sign systems in which one is "asemic" because it is approached with the
suspicion of possessing qualities we associate with the sign system we routinely use, but whose elements we cannot recognize or translate, or whose logic and meaning we cannot access. In asemic writing, these suspicions and assumptions just hover around the specimen, and questions indeed arise as to how we should be "appreciating" or "critiquing" artistic attempts involving the "asemic," which seems to be located between the extreme poles of enigma and meaning. Can we treat asemic writing then as
a kind of
parody of writing and language?
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In an Otto Zitko exhibit, Helsinki, 2005
Photo by Petri Virtanen |
11. In Zitko's "labyrinthine and whirling" non-literal writing, we are not dealing with the meeting of two writing or sign systems, one assumed to be known and one assumed to be unknown. To say we are is probably like saying Pollock's paint dribblings and drippings are specimens of some form of writing. Some can remind you of particle collisions, or chaotic, infantile, erratic scrawlings where recursive patterns can sometimes occur. But these lines don't trace "natural" chaotic fluctuations. The directionality is so uneven, so erratic, that only a feverish and intentional multi-directionality could be at work. The chaotic lines don't really impress us as fully chaotic, despite the fact that we are given this impression at first glance. The deliberate manipulation of the line's directionality and the changes in size, length, or color appear so many times that we can only conclude that what we have is artificially made. The work is just so much more chaotic than nature to be natural or to be even called "chaotic." Probably, it will be better just to call it "super-chaos." It exceeds the chaotic, and applies multi-directionality or non-directionality to push the inscribing gesture beyond nature, writing, signs, or meaning, and into the energy of the open line. Here, the open line is free to become its own full event, outside of order and chaos.
