agamwords...

Between 1959-1962, Agam also experimented in the application of multiplicity to a particular kind of theater equipped with several stages upon which different scenes of the same play took place simultaneously.

In 1958, Agam even began experimenting with a new kind of "simultaneous writing," which dissociates speech from reading, and in which several verbal expressions are written one above the other so that they may be grasped at the same time. He demonstrated some of these ideas in a didactic illustrated book in Hebrew, published in Israel in 1989: Agmilim ("Agamwords").

i would be very interested in hearing from anyone out there who knows more about agam's agmilim...

perec on "why"...

"i have never felt at ease in talking about my work in theoretical or abstract terms. even if what i produce seems to stem from a long-worked-out program, from a long-standing-plan, i believe far more that i find my direction by following my nose. from the books i have written, in the order i have written them, i get the sometimes reassuring and sometimes uneasy feeling (uneasy because it is always suspended on a "projected" work, on an incompletion pointing to the unsayable, the desperate object of writing's desire) that they map a path, mark out a space, signpost a fumbling route, describe the specific staging posts of a search which has no why but only a how: i feel confusedly that the books i have written are inscribed and find their meaning in the overall image that i have of literature, but it seems to me that i shall never quite grasp that image entirely, that it belongs for me to a region beyond writing, to the question of "why i write", which i can never answer except by writing, and thus deferring forever the very moment when, by ceasing to write, that image would visibly cohere, like a jigsaw puzzle inexorably brought to its completion."

georges perec, 1978, re-printed in review of contemporary fiction, spring 2009.
image: a series of chess moves that perec used towards the writing of "life: a user's manual".

when words become curves...

a short found poem from a book on a strange kind of shorthand from 1891, there are so many amazing images and texts in here i will revisit it in depth on airforms later. the squiggle lines next to the text is a kind of notation of the phrase...

ionesco on writing...

andre coutin: you do not view yourself as an improtant writer, you do not believe you're creating a magnum opus, yet for you writing is a way of experiencing the wonder of being.

eugene ionesco: to write. to experience the unique sensation of covering a sheet of paper with black signs, words which speak of the wonder of existing and the ability to express it. this is no stylistic exercise, but a birth occurring between nothingness and "thing-ness". to write is to be acutely conscious that the world is simultaneously a hell and a miracle. i discovered this sensation when i was ten or twelve years old. a writer always tries to express the ineffable.

andre coutin: salvation by literature?

eugene ionesco: i said that literature was this superficial, incidental, mediocre thing. yet i continue writing. i write so as to contradict myself. i'm free to express insignificance. books remains as objects, save us from the horror of nothingness. the what's-the-good-of-it-all which today prevents me from living fully doesn't stop my hand from covering sheets of paper with my scribblings.

grand street, issue 65, 1998

eight symbols...

beautiful little image depicting 8 symbols invented by fo-hi circa 2800 BC. from the story of the alphabet by edward clodd 1928.

the lines are pictorial representations of knotted cords that were used before the invention of writing. "the number and distances of the knots served as conventional mnemonics, and also as imperial records until written characters replaced them". these were the first characters to symbolize words based on the cord knot system.

of course, this little op art box represents some very serious words. i really love how the various arrangements of continuous and broken lines feel like an agnes martin painting - particularly as these simple lines are connected to both landscape and belief.

the lines are also reminiscent of graphic notational music scores, almost like a key of permutations for a lengthier work.

lastly, both the words and the lines remind me a bit of ian hamilton finlay's text works. like finlay's best concrete poetry, if one reads the list outloud there are all kinds of spoken sounds the words share, and there is a hint of narrative (from heaven to earth). there is also an added dimension to the fact that even though the line sequences are based on abstract notational knots in string; they somehow begin to feel "representational" in relation to the words connected to them.

it's nice when an illustration ceases to illustrate and becomes it's own path of various references and wanderings...