UN COUP DE DES PART ONE

MARCEL BROODTHAERS

He aims at a complete elimination of the words by masking them with black bars similar to those used to render portraits anonymous by obscuring the eyes; the words of an entire line are fused in one black block.

Through the use of language, one can bring the world into one’s own reach. Things are named, distinguished from each other and classified, letters become words, and words are linked with animals and things. Language shapes the way in which the world appeals to us and allows us to establish common meaning. According to broodthaers, however, this means that the object of language is dependent on the individual who uses it: “we pass from the alphabet to the world, from the word to the elementary phrase and from there to the object, which has become dependent on the word (..), that is to say, the subject.” In his work he constantly endeavors to overcome the supremacy of language, to which the work of art is also subjected on the one hand, by manifesting its conventional and subjective nature and, on the other, by abolishing the primacy of language by approaching words, objects and images in the same way and bringing them as close together as possible.

GERHARD RUHM

In the early 1960s, i began to reduce the copy in some brochures and books by blotting out the type area with ink, leaving only few selected words, to the synoptic view, i hoped, they would form a free-floating constellation in the sense of “concrete poetry”, an extremely compressed poem that would now transmit its own message. Entirely blackened pages function here as pauses that are part of the composition, silences that delay and create tension. Turning the pages becomes an act that structures times, redering us consious of the processual character of reading. The extent, however, to which the sequence of isolated terms ultimately forms a meaningful “whole” depends also on the reader’s interpretive ability. After all, every word by itself, like an acoustic event, an accord, already triggers sensation that call forth associations.

DOMINIK STEIGER

I LOVE HOW DOMINIK PLAY ON WORD.