A dice thrown unhinges words from a center. They begin to
float, as if ignorant of origins and ends. It was an iconic moment. It was as
if writing rediscovers pictorial space as a way of decentering language at a
time when the pictorial arts are abandoning classical spaces (visual poetry,
for instance). First, the linearity of writing is repositioned in a
multi-directional space. Next, linguistic elements regain their visual and
material weight over plain symbolic or metaphoric functions. Then they shed
their classical formal constituents and organizing principles, from semantic
associations to generic markers and syntactic orders. Finally, they recover an
infinite space of multi-directional distribution and transformation. The
liberating movement from an "abstract" or logico-syntactic mode of
organization towards a more "concrete" or spatio-material mode is further extended by the
"dynamization" of the notion of the "concrete" as a realm
of indeterminacy (the new "abstract").
The disappearance of classical spaces spawned various
species of materialism and conceptualism: the object became more formal and
material, non-symbolic, and at the same time, conceptualist (cultural and
historical fantasy). But we can also say that, with the disappearance of
classical spaces. traditional materials found a closer affinity with a
decentered language. In an "action" painting, for example, the
"content" pointed at is an intersection of event, process, and
material, with the randomized production representing a non-pictorial,
non-deterministic space. Directional and formal markers have disappeared,
leaving us only with the impression of an extensive, non-teleological material
process.
The various possibilities of a post-pictorial, permutational
space: noise & the open line. The approach has always been a dualist
contradiction. Permutational space is everywhere; it forces you to read, however
errant your effort may be. But it does not end there: any moment of
subjectivity or fantasy is swallowed back by the noisy sea, which reaffirms its
inescapable power in the meeting space of subjective and objective chance: the
open line.
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