extract, 1

dominant order input if impression 
dilation behind  arrived before totality
at the counter external directive risk

tiny emitting a sequence background
secure bypass preview turn out panel
further provided by time with emphasis

correlate assumptions before process
bisect redundant overlay transfer
obvious upper chances beyond simple

installed organized brevity periodic angle  
returns negation media decision quickly
by many estuary radiating effacement

invalidate operation superstition field
surplus together with potent legend 
barely begun notation expenditure spike

companion secondary delay induced 
elevation terminal passing of mass-form
precedent terms ordinate recovery

inside involve junction creating where
inspire the moment obvious property
inquisitive pushes implicit cycle

determinate bulk inclusion assembly
attraction of undeniable employ delivery
extended measure chemical prowess

 ...

comic tension

Comedy that exploits physical traits is often the lowest type of humor, and probably has mythic roots (Odysseus as beggar). The twin faults of physical deformity and economic misery combine to highlight the divisive valuations of a master class.

Character and personality satires, caricatures, or spoofs are less physically oriented humor, and could be seen as trademarks of a different, more socialized, or politically-conscious groups. A moral or philosophical dimension is added, but still hinting at ideals that have not been properly met.

Situational comedy has ancient roots too, and exploits the malentendu, confusion, or mix-ups resulting from accidents beyond human control. It may not be hard to say that absurdist comedy has roots here, although with this type, any master context allowing the comedy to be defined is already missing. Thus, any discussion of "roots" becomes misplaced here...

The first represents the breakdown of a cosmic order (reversals); the second one can only point out the impossibility to identify a point where that is possible. The baseline, in fact, is a kind of metaphysics of poverty, but which is haunted by the echo of order, meaning and language. This is why the play of language, and its tendency to break down, dramatizes this irreparable tension.

A table of dissociations

Before the message or form, object or subject, theme or argument, there is the brute script, an artifact caught in histories of symbolic processes.

The symbol or script in itself is not signifying; there are super-signs deployed that circulate to organize other signs: master concepts, idées-forces, key terms, sign-posts…

To subtract the symbolic energy from the line: the symbol with the minus sign;

There is always a question of the problematic link between the practice of the idea and the idea of the practice;

Any species of the declarative (explanation, illustration, etc.) is suspect as a device of coherence. Any argument moving towards the defense of an idea or process is a declarative;

Can we start writing without any master discourse or subject taking charge, no thematic conducting the mass, or rhetorical order whatsoever sculpting the flow of thought and emotion?

Although consistent with argumentation, it would be too declarative to cement this announced objective with a coherent practice, or overload it with the physics of illustration or execution, as if there was a seamless medium between idea and practice, and that it would just take some technique and effort to demonstrate it.

That would just replicate or reinstate a center for the discursive production, overlaying the negative symbol with a positive film of meaning that super-intends all the series…

It would restore the symbolic energies of scripts as the primary field of events. This may be unavoidable, with the symbolic always resurging like an echo or after-effect;

This is the tension that tugs us back and forth from meaning-effects and their material processes. The entry-point is always already at risk.

Using the logic of intention and purpose: I would say, “I want to start a table of dissociations.”

It begins with the dissociation of symbolic energies from scripts, that is, both in associative and constitutive levels. I don’t claim that scripts should not have these functions, but that the significance of scripts is a temporary product. There is an actual management of scripts within an economy of significations, a connection we foreground by dissociations.

First, I would like to place myself at the level of the scriptural item: language as artifact.

Next, this scriptural gesture is managed by a host of thematic attractors: subject, topic, argument, key idea, source, destination, etc.

The process is not analytically pure: the practice is a see-saw of contradictions, erasures, postulation and cancellation. This explanation is an example, another declarative…

This dissociative practice of scripts entails the suspension of major associative items, patterns, and principles: syntax, attribution, description, allusions, imagery, rhyme, and other language forms.

In short, a re-view of actual and personal intertexts, or of various thematic attractors: lyricism, humanism, idealism, movements, aesthetics, schools of thought, literary forms, discursive styles, rhetorical patterns…

In any case, neither in a clear commentary nor in an applied practice can this whole idea, purpose, or intention be unified. Both terms (commentary, practice) become master concepts themselves, immediately taking over the sense of events.

But that opens a moment where dissociations can be launched again, in dispersive bursts I can probably call "sidelances..."

Fantastic machines

A man was looking for some fantastic machines to impress his in-laws with. And in this room, sir, we have Machine A and Machine X. “I don’t understand. They look quite identical.”

True, sir, but that is what it seems on the surface. Let me explain as objectively as I can. When you push this button on Machine A, it proceeds to unfurl a world for you in an unexpected series. Let’s say it starts with 1, it can come out with 973, but not necessarily. There is no absolute rule that governs the series that it spurts. In any language event, it may follow 1 with gold or cow or never, or any nonsense symbol like ∞ or µ, a vegetable salad, or roof of Italian villa in case, or even a human human child, a supernova and a preposition.

“Interesting, but I have no great need for this child or that supernova. How about Machine X?”

This is the most fantastic machine of all, our prototype. When we push this button, it generates a series following strict rules. For example, 1 is followed strictly by 2, then by 3. The word it is followed by a singular verb in the third person, and this apple is always eaten by Eve before Adam. Archaic can always rhyme with ecstatic but not with dice. Now you have 6209, a seemingly random number, but represents 17 solar earth years. You can opt to push this other button if you find yourself unable to divine the rules, which in your case, dear sir, would be quite rare, I believe. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then.

Amazed, the man said, “You’re right. This is the most fantastic machine you have. Look how as if it had read my mind completely.” It doesn’t surprise me, sir. If I may add, with full sincerity, that before you came into the store, I heard the same machine say A man was looking for some fantastic machines. I simply took that to mean you.

“What a very fitting and necessary way to end. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then. I’ll take X.”

Letter ghosts

Paul Klee, Letter Ghost

It was tempting to use the term "post-literate " to designate a set of procedures in a body of artistic productions that I wanted to look into these past few months. Many of these works use procedures from concrete and visual poetry, lettrism, hypergraphism, intermedia, language poetry, and asemic art, and they basically foreground and interrogate, among other things, ways of reading and interpreting that we have learned and that we still use, despite the fact that we may not even have a clear or formalized idea of the procedures we deploy. We assume that there is an art or science of interpretation that is "normal" or "standard," and if not, at least it would belong to any of the numerous schools of reading that exist, all assuming that the job of reading is the exposition of the "semantic content" of a linguistic or semiotic formation. Thus, you are "literate" if you possess a set of skills, traditional or not, that allows you to decode or interpret (that is, read, or write) within the same semiotic system. You have multiple literacy when you have (varying levels of) competencies in other media or systems.

Instead of one global term, maybe it would be more prudent to use a few, depending on the emphasis of the work being considered, especially if we know that the producer of the work is "literate." In fact, just by the ability to use, comment on, and interrogate semiotic systems or media, the author cannot be "illiterate" or post-literate in any way. Hence, someone like Michaux who has productions in the form of writing, drawing, and painting can be said to be "poly-literate." In this way, his asemic work called "Narration" cannot be simply called post-literate as if it precluded any competence in the manipulation of a sign system or medium. It may be more apt to call it "meta-literate" because it is that kind of work that comments on another sign system, that of narrative, linguistic or not, however much it reduces what it comments on to a pure energy of inscription seemingly devoid of innate significance.

In the same way, the kind of cue I want to follow here can be gleaned from Klee's "Letter Ghost" painting. Again we have one medium commenting on (or enveloping) one another. As a ghost, the letter exists and does not exist at the same time. The ghost in the painting is represented as a kind of cursive outline or signature. In other words, the image is in manuscript format, but only thinly delivered by the curvilinear energy of the writing gesture. This intersection blurs the line between the image which is given in the form of handwriting, and the letter which is presented as nothing more substantial than a ghostly outline winding over the plane of visual space. The childlike, fetal evocation may also be taken as the nascent pre-natal moment of both semiotic worlds, proposing a borderline site of indifference where reading itself is still undecided about the signifying medium it would be incarnated into. Hanging between the spirit of the letter and the letter of the spirit, the visual and the verbal mutually constitute each other, but only as a tenuous, hovering evocation of a strong suspicion of unidentifiable presence.

At a certain point in the history of some cultures, the written word, capitalizing on verbal or natural languages, gained ascendancy as the primary medium, considered to be the master carrier and arbiter of meaning, knowledge and reference. Now, it is just a part of many semiotic and para-semiotic systems against which it still competes, and over which it still retains a certain level of hegemony or priority. Poly-literate works would represent one area where this dominance is dispersed or diluted, or even fully decentralized.

Case 1. 

There are works where the form and the spatial arrangement of the written word are modified (enlarged, spread out, misspelled, colored etc). Apolinaire's calligrams and Mallarmé's Un coup de dès are the beginnings, or Zaum, or Futurism. There is an element of serious playfulness here, coming at an age where photography is developing, with abstract styles entering painting, and even theater. The elements composing each art genre seem to be attaining greater freedom, as they begin losing their mimetic or realistic pretensions. Later on, we would have Dadaism and chance art doing basically the same thing. With them, space loosens syntax and makes room for greater ambiguities, and words become objects themselves. At any rate, despite these unusual procedures, the discursive thread can sometimes still be recovered, with the letters and elements of the language still recognizable by some slight effort at normalization. There may still be some readability offered in some works, even after some frontal attack on complacent bourgeois consumption of ready-made meanings and values. At the extreme end of this would be Melnick, or P. Inman, whose works--having letters but no words, can be said to be moving towards asemic borders.

--From Karawane (Hugo Ball, 1916)

jolifanto bambla o falli bambla

großiga m'pfa habla horem

egiga goramen

higo bloiko russula huju

hollaka hollala

anlogo bung

blago bung blago bung

bosso fataka

ü üü ü

schampa wulla wussa olobo

hej tatta gorem

eschige zunbada

wulubu ssubudu uluwu ssubudu

tumba ba-umf

kusa gauma

ba - umf

--From David Melnick's Pcoet’s (G.A.W.K, 1975)

thoeisu

thoiea

ackorn woi cirtus locqvump

Case 2. 

A little stretch on the road of linguistic and formal distortion, you will have an attack on the main discursive, rhetoric, and logical functions of language : arguments and thoughts not built up, paradox and contradiction, ambiguity, or reverse engineered syntax. You can see these in techniques beginning with surrealism and chance art, in Dada, up to some American prose poems, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E= poetry. In many cases, normalization would not allow the recovery of a clear meaning, especially if what you have is the mise en relief of semiosis itself, like in Grenier, probably. The reading moment is the meaning, and nothing beyond it that is fixed, given, or certain. There are many recent works where you don't even have sentences anymore, but just a clustering of words whose syntactic and, hence, semantic connectedness is compromised (cf. the sites of Vugg Books, or Ubuweb). A language is recognizable, and we may see normal valid words, but they don't amount to any global meaning, or a ''complete thought'' (Cf. Barrett Watten's poem of the same title). In all cases, it may imply the exhaustion point of a semiotic system or group which is no longer seen as the master code par excellence, losing its transparency and adherents, and either disintegrating into structured babble or foregrounded as a code with its own historico-political limits and materiality. Thus, from the point of view of that system, practices like these that keep breaking the rules can be considered to be "post-literate." However, I would rather qualify them as "supra-literate," as a sustained and methodic interrogation of the code from a paradoxical "interior distance." As in the first example below, the global senselessness created by the absence of cohesive tools on the first lines is not at all remedied by the presence of "as" on the second lines, thereby reminding us of the fully catachretic nature of syndetic and metaphoric conjunction by a concrete dose of counter-practice.

cable car laid-back vane fetus windswept cargo misadventure limousine

as sagacity as intrusion as preconception as crossfire as

sculpt jog jog killer ramification conceivable dolt bill summit whippoorwill

as absorption as licentious as domestic as disallow as

--From "Applicable Rubber," Kervinen, Leftwich & Bennett

[03] frappe with cohesion,

emirate unveiled oceanside water falls

at an uncommon rated,

norms aggregate uncurl afterthoughts

empty happens those of safety ie,

nimbus totality fragrant tome seldom as

a praline total eidos tossed inert,

parley for maize on framing salts,

evolutions' however non-adjunctive

whereas simple afternoon sole par ten

already is embellished onerous a fre-

quency of armor ounce thought no

happenstance recursive to serenely,

qua fin infinity valise to ebb role tows

out of range,

robbed ie meltdown-ing theory's cry

one semblance ou the other window

less,

--From Peter Ganick, "Skipping .95"

Case 3. 

Next, you have hypergraphy or intermedia, where language is indeed recognizable, but is just another semiotic system not holding any dominant role. In this decentralized polysemiotic context, the dimensions for reading pathways multiply where text component can be unrelated to other media. The textual component can be normal strings, modified forms, or fragments in a mixed media environment. An early example would be Paul Klee's letter paintings, then Lettrism (proclaiming the end of poetry of words). Here again, language is not holding the semantic key explaining the meaning of other media. It does not play signifier to signifieds, but is in itself a passive element without an interpretative role. Normalization may not be needed, but the meaning it yields isn't the ultima ratio of the work, since it is just an element among many, or even the least important. In this case, language abdicates its role as key interpreter or nominative frame, and gets absorbed as pure object among others, where it can even morph towards asemic configurations.

Case 4. 

Finally, you have parasymbolic, or asemic works like in Klee (mysterious or secret letters painting), Dubuffet (art brut, doodles), or Michaux and up to recent waves (some extreme L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E "poetry," Bernstein, Tim Gaze, etc). You may have shadows of symbols, para-signs. Often the word or sign is barely recognizable, or corrupted morphemically. Or you can't see any valid words or letters at all. Language is difficult to ascertain. You can have doodle level scripting to vibratory marks, some kind of drawing, or outright graphism embedded in other media. This is the point where writing, or what appears to be some kind of writing, intersects drawing. Normalization is useless, or even out of the question, since no language we know is at all involved. This is some kind of writing outside of what we call language. By intersecting drawing or sketching, they prompt us to ask if we can use concepts in these domains to begin any dialogue with these productions. Or do they imply blocking of any possible meta-language for interpretation, interdicting interpretation itself or any of its variants? For what is the use of opacity if meaning can be recuperated on another level?

In the language of action

1.

In the language of action loading.

In the action of language loading.

Pause for the analysis of action in the language of action.

Pause for the analysis of language in the action of language.

Action ongoing, language encoding.

Language ongoing, action encoding.

The action of language encoding ongoing.

The language of action ongoing encoding.

Pause for the analysis of action in the encoding.

Pause for the analysis of language in the ongoing.

The encoding of ongoing language of action in action.

The ongoing encoding of the action of language in action.

Analysis encoded in action.

Analysis encoded in language.

Pause for the ongoing encoding of the encoded analysis of the language of action.

Pause for the ongoing encoding of the encoded analysis of the action of language.

2.

Ongoing action of language on the language of action ongoing encoding.

Ongoing action of language on the action of language encoding ongoing.

The encoding of the ongoing language of encoding of the language of action in the analysis of the ongoing action of language.

The language of the analysis of the encoded language of action in the ongoing action of encoding of the action of language in the action of language encoded.

The language of ongoing encoding in the analysis ongoing encoding in the action of the language of action.

The action in the language of the encoded language of encoding ongoing analysis in the language of encoded action.

Pause for the action of language, pause for the language of action. Pause for the encoded action of ongoing encoding.

Pause for the ongoing language of encoding action.

The action of language in the language of action encoded.

The language of action in the action of language ongoing.

3.

The encoded language of action in the ongoing encoding of action ongoing encoding.

The encoded action of language in the encoding language of action encoded ongoing.

Pause for the analysis of the ongoing action of encoded action in the language of action.

Pause for the analysis of the ongoing language of ongoing language in the action of language.

The action of encoded action ongoing in the language of action encoded in the action of language.

The language of encoded language ongoing in the action of the language encoded in the action of language.

The language of the encoded language of the ongoing action of language encoded in the analysis of the language of action ongoing in the encoding of the action of language on the ongoing.

The ongoing action of the encoded language of action in the ongoing language of action encoded in the action of the ongoing action of encoding the language of action ongoing encoding in the language of action.

4.

Pause for the action of encoding the analysis of the ongoing encoding of the analysis of the encoded language of action ongoing in the action of language ongoing encoding in the action of ongoing language of encoding.

Pause for the language of the encoded analysis of the ongoing encoding of the action of the encoding of the analysis of the action of the ongoing encoding of action in the analysis of ongoing action of encoding.

In the action of encoding the language of action encoded in the action of the ongoing encoding of the language of action in the ongoing language of the analysis of language ongoing in the action of language encoded in the encoding action of language ongoing analysis in the action of the language of action.

In the action of the encoded language of the ongoing encoded action of the language of ongoing language ongoing the encoding of the analysis of the ongoing analysis of the encoding of the action of the language of action encoded in the language of the ongoing encoding of the language of the ongoing action encoded in the action of ongoing language encoding the action of language in the language of action.

In the action of the language encoding the action of ongoing action of language encoded in the language of language encoded in the ongoing action of action encoding in the language of language ongoing in the encoded action of the language of action.

5.

Pause for the analysis of action.

Pause for the analysis of language.

Pause for the analysis of encoded action.

Pause for the analysis of the ongoing encoding.

Pause for the analysis of the encoded action of language.

Pause for the analysis of the action of encoding.

Pause for the analysis of ongoing action.

Pause for the analysis of the encoded analysis of language.

Pause for the analysis of the encoded analysis of the ongoing action of language.

Pause for the analysis of the encoded action of the analysis of the language of action ongoing in action.

Pause for the analysis of the action of language on the analysis of the action of the ongoing encoding of the action of language on the language of action.

Pause for the analysis of the language of the language of action encoded in the action of language on the analysis of encoding.

6.

Pause of the ongoing analysis in the language of action loading…

Bernstein's Veil

Charles Bernstein, from "Veil" (Xeroxial Editions, 1987/1976)

Situated between concrete poetry and asemic art, this production from Charles Bernstein (http://www.ubu.com/contemp/bernstein/index.html) conveys the thickness of writing, where words themselves attain depth and weight, shade and texture.

Like a wild forest of weeds, the words overpopulate a space where language is no longer distinguishable from noise. Sign upon sign, the iteration of language, in the competing market of information, has rendered the text really opaque, literally, a singular page of sedimentary, overcharged signification. We can imagine the future of this document where ink or pencil, or any marking substance, after supplying the base for the articulation of differences, and feeding the glutton we call Meaning, returns by refilling the gaps, and restores itself in its seamless, borderless materiality, effacing the language it gave birth to in the beginning.

We can say that, as a consequence of the development in the technology of expression since photography and cybernetics, older media became the material of newer media, taking away their role as primary carrier of knowledge, and giving them a secondary role as material elements objectified and supervised by the absorbing mechanism: the hypertext.

In Bernstein's "Veil," the text is really becoming a textus, a cloth whose nature is more and more tactile than verbal, more manipulated than read, and more measured than understood. At least in this state, we don't see any master discourse or subject taking charge, no thematic conducting the mass, or rhetorical order sculpting the flow of thought and emotion.

Michaux's scribblings

From "Narration" by Henri Michaux, 1927

"It looks like writing, but we can't quite read it. " (http://www.herenow.com.au/asemic.net/)

"Asemic" writing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing) remains to be a category straddling the borders of writing, drawing, and the visual arts. In a way, that sums up Michaux's artistic trajectory. His famous ink drawings, whether or not we associate them to psychologistic arguments, can remind us of Rorschach ink blots, or of Chinese calligraphy, depending on your mood.

 In the image above, of course, what is amusing is the title of "Narration" given to obviously meaningless scribbles whose sole comfortable and recognizable element is the respect given to lineated spacing. Beyond this grade school level of conformity, the scrawlings resemble less any known language than the simple registration of some kind of unexplainable mechanical vibration. The whole enigma is no longer founded on the symbolic energies of scripts, but is now related as a process of inscription, like some kind of paint dribblings, or the seismic registration of natural events.

This is not to say that writing is now identical with nature. Despite the movement away from symbolization, and the push to bring inscription to the level of material forces, these scratchings, by the simple allusion to some kind of writing, still tempt us to look for something significant in them.

Even if we don't find any hint of real symbolic value, we still would want to give them some significance, even if they're now nothing more than the faint vibratory process traced over some kind of attempt to signify the attempt to signify.

From "Mouvements," Henri Michaux, c. 1950

Fantastic machines

A man was looking for some fantastic machines to impress his in-laws with. And in this room, sir, we have Machine A and Machine X. “I don’t understand. They look quite identical.”

True, sir, but that is what it seems on the surface. Let me explain as objectively as I can. When you push this button on Machine A, it proceeds to unfurl a world for you in an unexpected series. Let’s say it starts with 1, it can come out with 973, but not necessarily. There is no absolute rule that governs the series that it spurts. In any language event, it may follow 1 with gold or cow or never, or any nonsense symbol like ∞ or µ, a vegetable salad, or roof of Italian villa in case, or even a human human child, a supernova and a preposition.

“Interesting, but I have no great need for this child or for that supernova. How about Machine X?”

This is the most fantastic machine of all, our prototype. When we push this button, it generates a series following strict rules. For example, 1 is followed strictly by 2, then by 3. The word it is followed by a singular verb in the third person, and this apple is always eaten by Eve before Adam. Archaic can always rhyme with ecstatic but not with dice. Now you have 6209, a seemingly random number, but represents 17 solar earth years. You can opt to push this other button if you find yourself unable to divine the rules, which in your case, dear sir, would be quite rare, I believe. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then.

Amazed, the man said, “You’re right. This is the most fantastic machine you have. Look how as if it has read my mind completely.” It doesn’t surprise me, sir. If I may add, with full sincerity, that before you came into the store, I heard the same machine say A man was looking for some fantastic machines. I simply took that to mean you.

“What a very fitting and necessary way to end. Well, my in-laws would be in great need of this kind, then. I’ll take X.”

The point I am trying.

Anyone reading the text of "Chronic Meanings" by Bob Perelman would be amused by its adoption of a poetic format to enumerate, in an archival sort of way, the contents of what we still consider common and modern linguistic idiom.*

I cannot ignore the feeling that Perelman is just behind me watching as I write with the same expressions from a linguistic or literary repertoire he has so amusingly and sharply parodied. For what he has listed and played with are some of the fossils of our discursive library, semiotic artifacts that we pass around, whose age we are not often too conscious about.

By a method of suspension and fragmentation, the text forces us to reconsider the form and the syntax, but at the same time makes us aware of the way we process our thoughts into the meanings we find ourselves habitually supplying. For example, the line "The point I am trying." would usually need "to make" to complete it idiomatically, and doing differently would require justification in context or signal some attempt to call our attention to its (mis)construction and strangeness.

By underlining the facility by which we supply the missing parts of the equation (or quotation), Perelman redefines reading as a game of paleontology where language use completes itself pathologically via formulaic artifacts of meaning.

However, by fragmenting, by coupures, by the suppression of the remainder, by the suspension of syntax, the text also implies, predictably, inevitably, the ludic refusal of fossilized idiom. There may never be absolute escape from this library, even with neologism, especially when the most common is also the most useful and transparency is defined in terms of familiarity, but at least we can understand how dinosaurs worked when they still existed.

(*In theater, you will remember Ionesco, and how the meanings of expressions, truisms, sayings, factoids, logical threads, etc. seem to strip away, by dumb repetition, from the dry shell of language.)