Spaces of Shadows
& Other Mirrors

•

I

,,

A Thesis Presented to the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Fine and Media Arts

I

•
•I·
•
•I

Juan Ortiz-apuy
March 2011

1

 I
I

•
•
•
•
•

"A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste 's stall,
a place for trouvailles'
Umberto Eco

For the past 5 years, my work has been focused on the notion that language is a
place of struggle. Particularly, I am interested in the exchanges and intersections
between language, identity and violence. For this reason, I often regard my practice as a
kind of archeology of language, insofar as I am not only interested in looking at language
rather than simply listening to it, but also in exploring its power to create images and
representations.
What is more, part of my research has been devoted to mapping out this
entangled land of language. And for this reason, I often describe my practice as a road
trip into these remote places. The gray area where articulation meets ineffability and
language is a platform of both mediation and oppression. Thus as I make the drive,, I
take dirt roads, detours, wrong turns and often end up in cul-de-sacs. At the end, the trip
will hopefully lead me inland, searching for highways, open spaces and the possibility of
a bridge, of a way out.
This map, which is also included in the exhibition, is therefore my main research
tool and methodology. Since as I continue investigating and making new work, the map
continues to change -making renovations, new roads, towns and spaces. Thus the map
not only orients the direction of my research but is in turn shaped by the connections or
discoveries acquired through the making of the artwork itself. This means that artwork is
created not only as I make the drive, the journey through the towns and cities,
connecting the ideas and places in the map; but conversely, through the production of
the work itself .

2

 For this reason I believe that the map exists in a space in between my work and
my research, as a kind of binding thread that weaves these two together. What is more,
the map is divided into four large provinces, namely Province of Order, Provi~ce of
Representation, Province of Violence and Province of Things. These provinces serve as
four different frameworks for thinking about language, i.e. language as order, as
representation, etc.
For the work in the exhibition, I have been mostly exploring the realm of two
provinces, the Province of System and the Province of Things. Within these, there are
three major scaffolds, which I believe connect all the work in the show, these are the
notion of language as place, language as shape and language as structure.

I Language as Place I
"The world was made to end up in a handsome book"
Stephane Mallarme

I have been interested in exploring the notion of the library as not only the
storeroom of language and knowledge but also simultaneously as the place of both order
and structures. Thus in many ways the work in the exhibition serves as a kind of
proposal for a library, as a kind of study for alternative systems and structures within the

•

library, from its cataloguing system, to its architecture, to its furniture .
Upon visiting the exhibition, one the first works visible is "Little Fugue in G Minor
for Piano (J.S. Bach)". The originating idea behind this work was to create a library stack
or shelving unit sculpted in a way that the upper section followed a fugue musical score.
Thus the idea was to have a system for shelving books that used visual or material
criteria for classification, in this case, treating the book as an object and allowing the
shelving to occur according to the book's height and thickness. In a sense, my intention

3

 was to establish a system that wasn't so closed that it was inhibiting -without some
measure of leeway, but neither so open that it could be anything; but somewhere in
between indeterminacy and control.
The resulting work is not only a functional object that can be used as a shelving
unit, but it is also a sculptural form that makes tangible the spaces or shadows between
books, serving as a kind of mirror that turns absence into presence. The work, which is
constructed using African Mahogany wood tinted with Colonial Dark Mahogany dye, is
also presented alongside a series of 6 drawings of other fugue scores on graph paper.
The drawings, which are not only all to scale but also follow the same rules and
conditions established for the initial sculpture, function in turn as scores for other library
stacks to be realized and built.
Formally speaking, the work also echoes some of the ideas behind the content of
the piece, such as the look of the grain of wood, which gives the impression of layers,
accumulation and time. What is more, this notion of mirrors is also conceptually and
formally linked to all the works in the exhibition. As I mentioned before, this particular
piece not only mirrors the gaps left by books, but also seems to solidify the movement of
the piano keys, or alternatively, recreate a cityscape by the negative spaces formed, and
in such a way, the work seems to suggest a kind of Borgesian correlation between the
library and the world. A vision which is also shared by Alberto Manguel, who eloquently
recounts how in the most trivial accounts of a hero's life, or in the most fantastical
nightmares of Kafka or Julio Cortazar, one can often find a mirror of the universe at large
- complete with one's own triumphs and tribulations. (Manguel 29)
My interest in the fugue structure stems from Edward Said's notion of
contrapuntal reading.

In Western Classical Music, a fugue structure is a contrapuntal

composition in which various independent voices play off one another, with only a

4

 provisional privilege given to any particular one. Thus a contrapuntal reading for Said
entailed

examining

subjects

and

genres

vis-a-vis,

an

interdependence

and

complementarity that bears the mark of other similar approaches, from Eduard Gl!ssant
"Poetics of Relation", to Derrida's notion of "Differance", to Deleuze and Guattari's
Rhizomic structures. Although in slightly different ways, what all these approaches seem
to have in common, it is a rejection to any kind of monolithic, isolated and exclusionary
understanding of subjects. Therefore, for Said (as well as for Derrida) on reading a text,
one must open it out to not only what went into it but also to perhaps more importantly,
what did not and what the author excluded. (Said 67)
The goal of contrapuntal reading is then not to privilege any particular position
f

but to reveal the 'wholeness' of the text, the interwoven, overlapping and mutually
embedded currents in all knowledge. Ironically, such an approach seems to run counter
to the segregation and division of knowledge that is customary in libraries, a division,
which as I will explore later, follows an specific imposition of order along hierarchical
lines. Thus in a way, this project was about disrupting a certain cohesiveness of a genre
or body of ideas, and as well as many of my other works, can be read as a kind of
disruption of order. Since I am also well aware, some of the connections and links
between books created by the shelves could be potentially "meaningful", or should I
venture to say logical, while some other ones will be more random and less obvious providing an atonal ensemble . However, at this point my intent is also to suggest that
any classification or arrangement is ultimately arbitrary, and in this way, I would align the
work with Borges' collapse of difference between the same and the other-as in his story
of a Chinese encyclopedia which listed all the animals in the kingdom as following: "(a)
belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f)
fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j)

5

 innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine came/hair brush, (/) et cetera, (m) having just
broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies." (Borges, 27)

Furthermore, "Little Fugue in G Minor for Piano (J.S. Bach)" along with t~e ink
drawings, is an attempt to regard cultural forms and expressions as hybrid, mixed and
"impure", and to regard knowledge and history, as a giant fugue of interweaving themes
and voices of address and reply (Chowdry 109). Bearing this in mind, the work is also of
particular relevance given that contrary to the usual rhetoric behind Globalization, we live
in a world of increasing segregation along linguistic, religious and/or ethnic lines, and the
constant erection of borders and divisions.
Moreover, for Manguel, libraries are also mirrors of the culture that houses them.
He often writes how upon entering a library, he has always been struck "by the way in
which a vision of the world is imposed upon the reader through its categories and its

I

order". (Manguel 47) For him, the subjects and categories into which a library is divided
not only profoundly change the way in which the books will be regarded, but also, in turn,
are changed by them. Thus to place Jane Austen or Daniel Defoe in the section of
literature and not in the History of British Colonization and its imperial imagination is to
circumscribe the book to one particular reading.
With regards to order, Manguel also understood that there couldn't be any final
closure or resolution. Since as it's true of any classification, order begets order. Once a
category is established, it will then suggest or impose other subcategories to infinity. In a
library, there are no final categories; hence why a system such as the Dewey Decimal
System is so ubiquitous and widespread, it offers the possibility of always being able to
classify anything and everything. It promises the forever-sought desire of lending the
universe a semblance of sense and order. (Manguel 40)

6

__

_./

 •

•••

I,

•
•
•
•
,,
•

Every library then is an attempt to translate the chaos of discovery and creation
into a structured system of hierarchies and divisions. Melvil Dewey's system has been
over the years repeatedly revised and adapted but it remains essentially unchang~d , so
that the infinity of the universe can be contained within the combination of ten digits.
Although Dewey's method could be applied to any collection of books, his
understanding of the world, which is reflected in his thematic divisions, was surprisingly
constrained. According to Wayne A. Wiegand, one of Dewey's many biographers,
Dewey was an advocate of Anglo-Saxonism, an American dogma that believed in the
moral and intellectual superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. What is more, he was so
persuaded over the rightness of Anglo-Saxonism that he based his definition of
"objectivity" on it. (Wiegand 27)
In spite of the fact that Dewey played a crucial role in promoting the
unquestionable importance of public libraries, he also attempted to make everything not
Anglo-Saxon fit into categories of Anglo-Saxon devising, similar to the way in which he
also advocated for the swift assimilation of non-English immigrants into the dominant
American culture. (Manguel 60)
Among the other works presented in the exhibition is a series of photographs
entitled "Species of Spaces". One of these photographs, "Species of Spaces (The Void)",
presents the viewer with a group of 30 plus individual keyboard keys of the letter 'e',
placed on a pile and left on a shelf in the library designated for items to be "reshelved" .
The work, which was carried by removing all these letters from the computers of
Dalhousie's Library, was in a way about finding a form of disrupting the library's ultimate
catalogue, the online catalogue search system (temporarily at least that is, until they
were reshelved back).

7

 But besides order, the work was also about repetition, about drawing attention to
how many times this letter is used -taken that is the most popular letter in many
languages, including English. Furthermore, I was also interested in treating this letter as
an object, just like any other book, but overall, the work along with the other photographs
in the series, was about establishing a kind of anonymous relationship with the librarians
-about leaving suggestions for alternative ordering systems.
For the second piece in the series, entitled "Species of Spaces (Sentence)",
arranged a series of books in a vertical column so that their titles form a sentence or a
paragraph. The sentence then reads:

Reading Between the Lines
Not Only in Stone
Nor Any Country
Here and Now
Order and Chaos
And then the Truth
Semiotics Unfolding
For All We Know
Speaking
The Conceptual Basis of Language
Language as a Human Problem
But Even So
All is Well
In Transit
At the Center
And Peace Never Came
A Writer at War

For this work, I was interested in the concept of intertextuality and selfreferentiality in language and discourse. I was thinking in the idea of language as a kind
of labyrinth of mirrors and reflections, and the notion of the author, the writer, as being
lost in it. Therefore the intent was to compose a work, a type of poem if you will, strictly
using other writer's work.

8

 In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault locates Cervantes' infamous knighterrant, Don Quixote, at an epistemic moment, since although Don Quixote's search is a
hunt for similitude, his yardstick are not the things in the world themselves, but rath_er the
world of books or literature. In this newly created gap that now exists between words and
things, Don Quixote then "reads" the world in order to prove his books rather than vice
versa (Aizenberg, 115). This moment, in which a literary work is produced, whose
exclusive domain is that of books themselves, is even more significant for Foucault with

•

Flaubert's The Temptation of Saint Anthony. After this, modern literature is activated Joyce, Roussel, Kafka, Pound, Borges; and then as Foucault would say, "the library is
on fire". (Foucault 92)
For Foucault, Flaubert is then to the library what Manet is to the museum, since
they now both erect their work taking from the edifice of the archive. After Manet, every
painting now belongs within the squared and massive surface of painting and all literary
works are likewise, "confined to the infinite murmur of writing". (Foucault 93)
In one of his last interviews, Said explained how one of the core questions behind
all his work and research, was about trying to define the relationship between humanism
and knowledge, specifically, how to understand difference and maintain such knowledge
in a kind of horizontal framework rather than along hierarchical lines (Dibb 2004). It is in
this vain that many of the works in the exhibition are in part a way of imagining a library
in which knowledge is not a type of fixed frozen mass; I mean the equivalent of what
Borges feared about the library as a form of formidable threatening presence - with
endless rows of books sitting quietly and authoritatively gathering dust; but rather as
something in flux and dynamic.
Manguel too often imagined a similar library. He writes about his dream of an
anonymous library in which books have no title and declare no author, forming "a
0

 continuous narrative stream in which all genres, all styles, all stories converge, and all
protagonists and all locations are unidentified, a stream into which [he] can dip at any
point of its course". (Manguel 63)
As was famously proclaimed by Marshall McLuhan, every technology proclaims
its own dictum; however the appearance of one does not necessarily mean the demise
of the other -the invention of photography did not eliminate painting but it renewed it.
Similarly, in spite of the increasing importance of the Internet and the digital archive, the
library of ink and paper still remains our foremost commanding pillar and repository of
research and knowledge. In this way, part of the aim behind the show was to explore the

physical (re)presentation of ideas and language, and also to propose a kind of visual
library that could also posses some of the same characteristics as the electronic one,
namely, as something constantly in motion and variable.
On the other hand, the exhibition as a whole could also be perceived to challenge
the idea of standards and certainty. Certain works seem to suggest "meaningful"
connections and links, for example in between the ideas and concepts in the "Language
as a Site of Struggle Map", while others seem to leave this operation to chance, as in
condition set for "Little Fugue in G Minor". One work that exemplifies this well is another
photograph in the same series entitled "Species of Spaces (from red to orange and from
orange to red)". For this piece, I reshelved a group of books according to color
degradation, and although the arrangement of the books seems to be subsumed under
this scheme, the compilation of titles seem to imply a connection to other systems, such
as say, the Terror Alert System. So the line of books goes from (red) In the Shadow of

the Bomb to (orange) Repression and Recovery and vice versa - with The War Goes On
in the middle. Therefore, my intention is here perhaps closer to propose an idea of
interconnectedness or of endless signification, in this case say the aesthetic formal

10

 structure with the political content, or as Jacques Ranciere would have it, somewhere in
between the Politics of Aesthetics and the Aesthetics of Politics.
So from my interest in other classificatory systems, for example based on tormal
criteria, such as color or form, comes the unexpected conclusion that any apparent
disorder is an order of a different kind, and any classificatory system is potentially
meaningful and arbitrary.

Following the intersection between order and identity, Manguel also knows all too
well that once books are set up according to a rule, whichever that might be, such order
grants them preconceived identities (Manguel 65). It is then not unreasonable to
suppose that in a similar way, the identity of a society, or a national identity, is often
mirrored by its respective libraries, by a compilation of titles that function as our
collective definition.
Conversely, Manguel also believed that every system of classification in a library
also sets up a severe hierarchy of exclusion. "Every library is exclusionary and the result
of choice", he wrote, "[it] conjures up its own dark ghost; every ordering sets up, in its
wake, a shadow library of absences." This idea is represented in some of the formal
characteristics in the work, specifically in the case of "Little Fugue" which, as mentioned
before, can also be read as the materialization of the negative spaces left by books on a
shelf. To me this was a way to represent this notion of a shadow of absences, but it was
also a way to metaphorically suggest the weight of what is not said but implied by books,
the massive authority of the written word.
For another piece in the same series, called "Species of Spaces (From 10 to 1)",
I reshelved bilingual dictionaries side by side of the ten most spoken languages in the
world into English. In this work, I was thinking not only in some of the issues mentioned
above with regards to the circularity and self-referentiality of language, but more

11

 specifically, about issues surrounding globalization and cultural hegemony. In which
case, some of the dictionaries have a more political connotation, for example, with the
Arabic-English dictionary or the Chinese-English one. So they are in a way, a ~ind of
ironic attempt to propose a set of help manuals for a world replete of conflict and
misunderstanding.
This being said, I was also interested in Martin Heidegger's notion that our
different worldviews are essentially sustained by our different languages, and the role
that these languages play in establishing different styles of being in the world. As he
explains: "language, it turns out, is what allows different worlds or cultures to be
disposed differently, and things to be the kind of things they are for those worlds"
(Wrathal 94). I was particularly interested in this given the increasing role of English, the
"International Language of the World", in binding or translating all these different
worldviews.

I Language as Structure I
"So very tempting to want to distribute the entire world in terms of a single code.
A universal law will then regulate phenomena as a whole:
2 hemispheres, 5 continents, masculine and feminine, animal and vegetable,
singular plural, right left, 4 seasons, 5 senses, 6 vowels, 7 days, 12 months,
twenty-six letters."
George Perec

The last work in the exhibition is called "One Standard Stoppage" and it consists
of a sentence, made with individual bronze letters, which states its own distance. The
sentence, measuring 227 inches long, is difficult to be read in its entirety from any one
single point of view, prompting the viewer to walk along or about the length of the
statement. The work is laid out on the floor and presented next to a wooden box where
the piece is finally kept and stored.

12

 •

•

II

Among the different layers of meaning and interpretation in this piece, I was
interested in the idea of language as architecture. In this, I was not only concerned in the
connections between the two, but in using this notion as a framework for thinking .about
language.
Thus I became interested in language as a building block, for example, the idea
of letters as building blocks for building words, and words as building blocks for building
sentences and meaning. But moreover, in the fact that, as Heidegger calls it, language is
our House of Being - a space of dwelling. (Zizek 103)
So I was thinking about language as a container and as something contained, but
also in the particular way in which language sustains us. In part, I was attempting to
draw attention to this by having a sentence laid out on the floor, which invites the viewer
to walk in order to read its content - only to realize that you are walking the distance you
were also reading. This last aspect can vary depending on the specific arrangement of
the sentence, as it can be laid out in any number of lines or shapes .
Furthermore, through this I also wanted to reflect on what Zizek calls "the
performativity of language", on the fact that language exerts a kind of performative
efficiency on us. In other words, the way in which language plays a fundamental role in
shaping our realities and constructing our identities, our socio-symbolic identities (Zizek
62, 2008). Therefore, I was concerned with suggesting a connection between language
and the body; in making a work that was more like a verb, or like a linguistic performance
in which reading could be literally an action, and language appeared as a physical force.
There is a physicality to reading in which, as Manguel writes, "a printed page
creates its own reading space, its own physical landscape; the texture of the paper, the
color of the ink, the view of the whole ensemble acquire in the reader's hands specific
meanings that lend tone and context to the words." (Manguel 75) And what's more, this

13

 is also mirrored by the physical spaces of the library, the distance of the shelves, the
crowding or paucity of the books, or the varying degrees of light and shade.
For Heidegger as well as for analytical philosophers, the only way to arrive ~t the
philosophical understanding of a thing is through the analysis of the sentences and
words we employ for talking about something. So when thinking about language one
should not only look at what language says but also at the very architecture or form of
language for shaping and creating content. As Hegel put it in the foreword of his
Phenomenology of the Spirit, "the standard by means of which we measure the situation
and establish that it is problematic could itself be part of the problem". (Hegel 52) It is
precisely this notion of language as being a kind of standard for measuring and depicting
things and ideas that I am interested in.
Furthermore, here I would venture to suggest other particularly political
connotations that the work might have. In creating this redundant and tautological
statement, I was also thinking about the role of rhetoric in politics, from empty
enunciations, to the struggle over language and meaning (say for example, the abuses
over the definitions of freedom or democracy).
This interpretation is perhaps, further reinforced by having a sentence, valuable
in its appearance: golden gleaming bronze letters; but lacking in its factual meaning or
significance. The piece also took approximately 9 months to complete and over 750
hours of labor, all performed by myself from the making of the mold, to the bronze
casting, to all the grinding, cleaning and filing.
In this same line of thought, language, writes Manguel, because of its erratic
ambiguity, cannot serve the dictates of power except as a catechism of questions and
answers, taken that in spite of its pretentions to precision, it can never affirm anything
indefinitely (Manguel 25, 2007). It is with this in mind, that although the work appears to

14

 assert a certain statement, however banal, the fact that the letters are separate and laid
out individually, always leaves the window open for the possibility of the work to lie and
deceive.
Thus this idea of language as an instrument to understand and shape reality
remains utterly valid today. According to scientist Richard Dawkins, our language skills
and other specialized functions, started developing when, driven by survival instincts for
reproduction, we began to interact among ourselves in order to influence one another's
nervous system and social behavior. (Manguel 65, 2007)
Heidegger also explained that the key feature for understanding language is to
analyze our responsiveness to it, meaning the way it shapes and guides our
understanding of ourselves and the world around us. As it is often mentioned, he also
firmly believed that language not only speaks, but in that it speaks by showing us, by
directing us. This is the "essencing" capacity of language, "its power to bring things into
their essence, of moving us so that things matter in a particular kind of way, so that
paths are made within which we can move among entities, as the entities they are".
(Wrath al 94, emphasis mine)
As with many of my artworks, in "One Standard Stoppage" I was generally
interested in this idea of the materiality of language and of treating words as things - as
objects with weight and value (the letters weighting over 80 pounds combined). Such
concept of weight, which is mentioned before with regards to "Little Fugue", is something
that can be connected to the notion of the weight of language, or the weight of
knowledge.
What's more, this is of particular relevance, taking that I am working with subjects
such as language and music that are generally understood as evanescent and
intangible. In fact, for "Little Fugue" and the series of drawings, there was a process of

15

 p

I
translating time into space or length; and similarly, for "One Standard Stoppage", it was
the idea of language not only occupying time but also space.
In exploring this idea of the ways in which language impacts us in material !erms,
it is also useful to consider Zizek's understanding of form and content. Taken that for
him, form in its very materiality is never mere form but it involves a dynamic of its own, or
in other words, form always determines a specific framework that in turn has the
capacity to generate a content of its own (Zizek 44). In other words, is not simply what
language says, but it's the actual structure and form of language that is of vital
importance. It is in a similar line of thought, that "One Standard Stoppage" was also an
attempt to bring the form of language closer to its content, and by result, exposing their
symbiotic relationship.
Another implication for this gesture of a tautological statement, in which the
signifier falls into the signified, is explained by Zizek with regards to socio-political
theory. For him, in a statement such as "a Mexican is a Mexican", one expects, after the
first occurrence ("a Mexican is ... "), an explanation of its signified; however when one
gets a reiteration, the repetition generates the effect of an ineffable X "beyond words",
that in actuality is only the result of words. The paradox being that, language always
reaches beyond itself to the reality of things and processes designating these by means
of clear denotative meanings, but when it attempts to refer to an ineffable transcendent
X, it is caught in itself._(Zizek 68)

•
•
16

 I

I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I

I Language as Shape I
"All utopias are boring because they leave no room for chance,
for difference, for the 'miscellaneous '. Everything has been set in
order and order reigns"
George Perec

In his 1908 modernist manifesto, Ornament and Crime, Adolf Loos vehemently
argued in favor of the axiom that "form follows function", calling for the elimination of
ornament in design and architecture. Loos believed that ornaments were immoral and
degenerate and that the progress of man and culture depended on this suppression.
What's more, he justified this ideology with the example of the tattooing of the Papuans,
as Loos regarded the Papuans not to have evolved to the level of morality and civility of
the "modern man" (Zizek 248). Interestingly enough, we can find a similar ideological
injunction in the architecture of language with regards to its form and function; a similar
impulse of language to do away with ornament, to employ direct language, to appear
clear-cut, transparent and as pure utility.
Bearing this in mind, two other important characteristics of "One Standard
Stoppage" are that the bronze letters have been high-polished to a mirror finish, and that
the font used is Helvetica. The choice of Helvetica was not only for its particular form as
devoid of ornament (or serifs), but also for its alleged design as pure utility. In other
words, I was interested in Helvetica not only for its ubiquity, but also for being a legacy of
Modernism - impinged with many of the ideals and utopias that went into Modernist
Design. In the end, there is a suggested connection between the ideals behind the
design of this font and the design of the edifice of language.
Like any other modernist design, language does not only appear clear-cut,
transparent and devoid of decoration; but it is also full of mirrors.

Such game of

reflections and repetitions is where language finds it own raison d'etre, its own form for

17

 survival. A space where language discovers the endless resourcefulness of its own
image and where it can depict itself as already existing behind itself, active beyond itself,
and so on to infinity. Or in the words of Foucault, "a real and majestic infinity in which
language became a virtual and circular mirror, completed in a beautiful and closed form".
(Foucault 60, emphasis mine)
Such an idea of language as not simply a mirror, but as a mirror of itself; is put
forward in the work by the mirror finish on the surface of the letters, and also in the fact
that the sentence also mirrors itself as it were, in form and content.
As mentioned before, the length of "One Standard Stoppage" is two hundred and
twenty seven inches. In choosing this number I was looking for a length that seemed
quite arbitrary the way that language is, or that it's logic appeared obscure. The reason
for this is that I was thinking in the possibility of creating a standard, of establishing a
new measuring yardstick. Such an approach seemed logical, as most standards are or
were arbitrary before they became a norm. So on a visit to a major museum and with the
help of a collaborator, I measured the length of speech - the limit at which it becomes
inaudible, the result, 227 inches.
Consequently, "One Standard Stoppage" is also a functional sculpture; it can be
stored and transported in its own container, and unfolded and arranged in any number of
ways in order to measure distances according to the length of my speech.
In addition, following this idea of language as an endless game of repetition and
duplication, my intention was to create an image of language as a mirrored structure, as
a work that held out a mirror onto itself, where it appeared like a miniature of itself, telling
its own story.
Conceptually, the themes of repetition and succession are linked to most of the
works and to the exhibition as a whole. From the labyrinthic dimension of words, to the

18

 I
I
I

I
I
I
I
I
I

I

notion that language must push back to infinity the limit it bears with itself -which
indicates at once its kingdom and its boundary. In a similar way, Borges also argued that
ultimately every library is "inconceivable, because like the mind, it reflects upon it~elf,
multiplying geometrically with each new reflection." (Borges 216, 2000)
The celebrated bibliophile and librarian, Aby Warburg, imagined the library above
all as an accumulation of associations in which, each association produces a new text to
be associated, until, he explains, "the associations return the reader to the first page".
For Warburg, every library is, indeed, circular; for Derrida, there is nothing outside the
text. (Manguel 203)
Such mesh of associations is what propels language to postpone its own demise,
it does so by slipping from book to book and dwelling among signs -in the interstices of
repetition and in the interval between words.
Moreover, the perception of a certain "transparency" of language is a paradoxical
notion at best. Taken that language, precisely because of its irregular ambiguity,
attempts to convince us of its accuracy and weight by declaring itself an absolutist
affirmation, a system of halting the world into a state of fixed being (Manguel 203, 2007).
It is with this mind that the work also contains an art historical reference, namely to

I

Marcel Duchamp's 1913 work entitled "Three Standard Stoppages". I was interested in
drawing a certain parallel in the way in which Duchamp's piece was a retort to the
authority of the meter (as an absolutist unit of measure), and the conception of language
as a benchmark by which we measure things and ideas.
Indeed, art historical references are generally very important for my work as they
follow the logic of this idea of intertextuality, quotation and allusion. They can be found
throughout the exhibition, from works like "Species of Spaces (The Void)", which not only
refers to George Perec's novel The Void (written in its entirety without using the letter

19

 I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I

~

I
I
I

I

~

I
I

"e"; but also referring to Gary Neil Kennedy's piece titled "e", in which he removed the
lower part of this letter from the typewriter at Eyelevel Gallery (an action which in turn is
believed to be a reference to Lawrence Weiner's "A 36" x 36" removal of lathin~ or
support wall. .. ").
Additionally,

there are references to

Minimalism

in various pieces and

specifically, to the work of Carl Andre and Donald Judd. In this regard, I was interested in
the phenomenological relationship that Minimalism proposed between sculpture and the
body. I wanted to propose a similar relationship between language and the body of the
viewer, to the way Minimalism positioned the body in a physical relationship with
sculpture. Thus, a work like "One Standard Stoppage", similar to Andre's floor tiles, is
meant to be walked about and around (though just perhaps not on it for now). Hence,
the intention with the exhibition was not only to present language as a material presence,
but most importantly, to implicate the viewer physically; or in other words, to portray
language as an object of spatial and perceptual experience.
I was interested in artists like Carl Andre and Vito Acconci's involvement with
poetry and language. Their notion of the white page as a physical container and a field of
action; in fact, if Acconci's writings were Language to Cover a Page, I wanted my piece
to be language to cover a room. And it is in this sense also that most of my text-based
work in vinyl or neon is a kind of writing on the walls as if writing on paper.
In the exhibition as a whole, my intention has been to treat words and books in a
similar fashion that materials operated in Andre or Judd's sculptures, where common
items such as bricks, logs of wood, or metal plates, functioned as a set of particles, as
block-like units that can be stacked, lined up, or placed in a grid. This being said, I also
wanted the work to have a certain kind of dynamism more akin to Acconci's move from
poetry, to performance and action. (Kotz 167)

20

 I
I
I
I

I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I

Lastly, I hope that this paper has presented the reader with a thorough and indepth exploration of the themes and ideas that went into this exhibition. I have tried to
examine many of the different layers of interpretation and intentionality that I deposite~ in
this body of work. This being said, I firmly believe that this collection of thoughts is not
only present in the work itself, but that ultimately it remains open ended for multiple
readings. It is for this reason that, as mentioned before with regards to the map, I usually
define my approach to making artwork as that of creating a space. The materials that go
into building and shaping this space are often a compilation of literary, theoretical and
historical sources. At this point, the work is then created as I travel through this space,
and at the end, once the work is completed, I remove myself and erase my footprints.
The work is then presented to the viewer, who can in turn, make her or his own
journey. The journey can perhaps take the viewer to some of the same places I passed
through or to others not seen by me. If the work is successful, there will be enough
space for the viewer who wants to stay on the outskirts and make a quick visit; but also,
there will be enough room for the viewer who wants to spend a longer time, and make a
journey of her or his own.

21

 Works Cited
Aizenberg, Edna. Borges and His Successors: the Borgesian Impact on Literature and the Arts.
Columbia: University of Missouri, 1990. Print.
Borges, Jorge Luis, and Andrew Hurley. Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.
Borges, Jorge Luis, and Eliot Weinberger. Selected Non-fictions. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Print.
Chowdhry, Geeta. "Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading." Millennium: Journal of
International Studies 36.1 (2007): 101-16. Print.
Edward Said: The Last Interview. Dir. Mike Dibb. Perf. Edward Said, Charles Glass. First Run
Icarus Films, 2004. DVD.
Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1996. Print.
Zizek, Slavoj. Living in the End times. London: Verso, 2010. Print.
Zizek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile, 2008. Print.
Kotz, Liz. Words to Be Looked At: Language in 1960s Art. MIT, 2010. Print.
Manguel, Alberto. The City of Words. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2007. Print.
Manguel, Alberto. The Library at Night. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2006. Print.
Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.
Wiegand, Wayne A. Irrepressible Reformer: a Biography of Me/vii Dewey. Chicago: American
Library Association, 1996. Print.
Wrathall, Mark A. How to Read Heidegger. London: Granta, 2005. Print.

22