contents:
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artist's talk | theory
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artworks | exhibition
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report | exhibition
What is energy? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one who asks me, I no longer know. Indeed, nothing concrete. A principle governs Nature: the universe is a number split up into tinier and tinier addends recombined or reordered according to a complex of interactions. No exception to this law is known. Following the procedure in the caption, the artist is invited to an experiment with this, collecting energy frames from a burning pinus nigra needle. A number of variations on the flame primordial hieroglyph will efface the material space of writing and found the alphabet of the fire. Paper will no longer be the site where the sign resides, but what the sign must breach. Each sign will depend on the angle of the sheet to the flame which, in turn, will be affected by a series of more or less hidden variables related to the tree of origin (size, age, desiccation, soil properties etc.). While all of these factors impinge upon the integrity and stability of the alphabet, the amount of energy released during the combustion will, to some degree, get stored in and be proportional to the number of sheets used. The fire, split into signs, will set itself as a thread between what is burning and what is about to burn, between the thought thing and the one to write. The very idea of writing will once again get reified, although no one knows what energy is.
Liner Notes for a Pithecanthropus Erectus Sketchbook | Post-bop
This collection of sheets is a purely asemic tone poem, sketching the mood of the first man to stand erect, taking inspiration from the musically depicted portrait given by Charles Mingus, in his Pithecanthropus Erectus.
Aiming at dealing with the story of mankind in its own way, asemic writing seemed the most appropriate choice, insisting upon semiotics, rather than idioms.
Overcome with his alleged superiority over the trees, likewise standing erect, but unmoving in the background, and over the animals, still in a prone position, man first conceived of conquering the Earth, then of eventually ruling Nature.
Given these assumptions, his sought emancipation led to solitude and self-enslaving.
As the original jazz suite, this poem can be loosely divided into four movements:
evolution, p. 11–23
superiority-complex, p. 24–47
decline, p. 48–53
destruction, p. 54–58
The first movement sets the elementary shapes (dots, stains, lines), which get later on, in the second movement especially, organized into more complex dynamic structures or repeated solos.
The introduction to the third movement, instead, registers a much more organic disturbance in the whole pattern. Further attempts to regain control over that first frantic signs of crisis fail.
The fourth movement is again based on the third, except that it develops into an increasing complexity ending with blank language lines, resembling those on page 28 and 29, but somehow unnaturally upwards, no longer organized into blocks.
The final, definite climax is a white fallout, an unexpressed ultimate (or even anew primordial) act.
London, Coldharbour Lane
Liner notes for a Pithecanthropus Erectus sketchbook, foreword by SJ Fowler, LN 2018, ISBN 979-8640487855 [Asemic-Eng] | buy: barnes&noble | amazon.com | .uk • read: archive • watch: YouTube • download: SJ Fowler's review
