Nothing is ever fully present in signs.
It is an illusion to believe I can ever be fully present to you
in what I say or write, because to use signs at all entails all my meaning being somehow always dispersed, divided and never quite at one with itself.(1)
The word Being cannot be contained by, is always prior to, in fact transcends, signification. Being. Being. Since the word is inadequate it is crossed out, since it is necessary it remains legible, under erasure.
Language is incomplete and unstable.(2)
Not only my meaning. Indeed but I myself: since language is something I am made up of, rather than simply a necessary tool I use, the whole idea that I am a stable unified entity must also be a fiction.(1)
I don't think my first language can be written down at all. I'm not sure it can be made external you see. I think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs.(3)
I'm not sure it can be made external you see. I don't think my first language can be written down at all. Simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs. I think it has to stay where it is;(3)
It can be made external I'm not sure. In the elastic gloom simmering. My first language can be written down at all I don't think. My flickering organs betwixt, where it is, it has to stay, I think;(3)
It can be made external, in the elastic gloom simmering, first language can be written down. flickering organs betwixt, where it is, it has to stay;(3)
be made external, in the elastic gloom simmer, can be write down. flick organs be to stay;(3)
be made in the can be write down, be to stay;(3)
bi meɪd ɪn ðə kən bi raɪt daʊn, bɪ tə steɪ(3)
bi meɪd bi raɪt daʊn3
bɪ3
In the space,
the air is setting
on your skin, cool
and flushing over your brow
to the bridge of your nose, it rests on your lips, like the disturbance of air after a word spoken
As you move past white walls, over sandstone tiles, the air ripples between you and the artworks,
the contact of your feet, shivers through porcelain dust, scattering molecules into the air as scent;
chalk,
plastic,
fresh wood,
cut stone,
acoustic dusts,
reverberating between white walls
suspended by the dialogue of one video
calling to another on each side of the space,
their voices ripple into the sculptures
which collect every murmur into the quiet weight of their bodies
becoming the pauses between words, the meaning passed over in silence
Air silently percolates through the metal lines and granite syntaxes of the sculptures
drifting between the holes and gaps of language
Of what must be said and
what can be felt but never heard
Air trembling from
disturbed vibrations, condense into a pressure felt
quivering over skin, alerting hairs on the back of necks, to the swelling volume of molecules;
rising into a cloud forming;
over a pale blue sky-
A hand
wading through the
weight of air into motion
beckons the body and air it passes through into speech
Fingers take the shape of the sign between meaning and utterance the rising pitch of the theremin; a mouth opened and speaking
Particles quake,
interference of air builds into,
the theremin’s whine signalling rain
ringing inside of pulse, cymbals shatter over wrists
clouds gather their weight with water, rippling between shoulders,
drums resound into chests, thunder rolls through throats
the flash of high hats, scattering over cheeks, into arching cerebral static words collapse into sensation, clouds condense into rain, falling over your skin as dark marks over dry stone. A sensory data, which dries into the plumes of white lichen on your body. Light from the projector submerges your hands with floating speckles of kin crying warnings through their flesh
Our own bodies no longer awake to the unseasonal heat of air, the strange heights of river water, the prick of a storm arriving on your neck
Or the first burn of a drop falling;
Cognitive dissonance Announced to the body
Your flesh the mediator between fact and stone
C
Porcelain dust,
Settles and falls onto
A translucent barographic line Gathering atmospheric vibrations to tape
Particles no longer suspended Drift onto granite altars
Resting
drawing tenuousness
into prayer murmured beneath breath so that words might fade into silence
Corporeal forms translate to the spaces they inhabit each new site excavating another pause
in their cyclical transformation
Porcelain dust
ground by hands
that molded clay
bound from sediment
communed from a quarry’s arch to the land.
Layers of time unravelled from fragments
magma cooled to granite, bone crushed by centuries into limestone, life fossilized into oil stretched into thin films of plastic
that collect air and porcelain dust
between sunlight
The time buried in their forms panned
into presence to reveal the value of transience
Blossoms are only blossom until they fall to the ground as apples, tentatively red and smooth, defined by what they'll no longer be once changed.
Beside them, their porcelain others, absorb moments noticed before decay. Material creating a point through which to find refuge in the
ultimate impermanence of everything
a space to empty out thoughts
absences filled with the body,
for memories to surface the edge of waiting
E
Silver furrows, crinkling into the ridges of limestone, Crushed, collapsing, compressing into hillsides, Smooth and half-remembered into a home;
Sharp, clean air; suspending the prick of new grass and hawthorn buds, late this year and awakening
the scent of earth and dust, buoyant and floating, into the grind and crush of machinery, blending into a background hum of comfort
Turquoise swelling into green, folding into orange, familiar pinks, warming into the dappled reds of light seen behind closed eyes
glimpses of memories, teased into images pieced together from a feeling
Inked blues pulse into the gold of sunlight over headlands,
the churn and clatter of morning, the land recollecting its shape,
Shapes become forms, edges fold into places, rustles become sounds
Remembered, collecting in the pit of stomachs, churning in guts, welling inside chests, through throats, along vocal chords,
Vibrating with air, swelling through cheeks
Expanding onto the tip of tongues
pressing against teeth
Pushing air
Into
The
Shape
Of
Words
Which fall with the weight Of their failure
To the ground
References;
1 Terry Eagleton, ‘Literary Theory: An Introduction’, 1983
2 Madan Sarup, ‘An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism And Post-Modernism’, 2nd Edition, 1993
3Claire-Louise Bennett, ‘Pond’, 2015
The Limits of my Language Exhibition Curated by Rachel Botha, with Artists Chloe Brenan, Johanna Nulty and Elaine Grainger Kilkenny Arts Office 2021