This work was shown in a glass cabinet, where I projected silent, minor, grave on a microscopic scale. The poem, which could be moved to illuminate certain parts of the text, discusses the instrumentality of language and our reluctance to leave images be, regardless of their alluring availability.
Part of Secret (of) Knowledge: Film ⇆ Photography ⇆ Painting, ULUS (Association of Visual Artists of Serbia), Paviljon Cvijete Zuzoric, Belgrade (RS). Documentation by Nedo Gavrić.
as above, so above
the diary
for me
is the most unprivate form
since its shape, its surface its denomination
already
externalises, eradicates
its inner perplexions
the many publicly-discussed associations
shatter its subsumption of the intimate
this my mother taught me
as an early certitude:
she gave me a tiny diary, with an even smaller lock, covered by a gloss of fake gold
and i filled it with myself
until i discovered that she had broken the lock, the size of my pink,
my minimus,
flowering into the lawfulness of de minimis…
a legal doctrine concerning things that are so minor
as to be negligible, trivial or trifling
this provided me with the earliest hint, suggestion and flirt
that unrecognisable forms, shapes and viscitudes
will do what she always refused
to hold a breath for me
and that i will contract
back into my household
as i slik* it back
into the vulgarity of this inexpansible corridor
that is my vernacular: an unsailable hush and gasp
a vernacular that i cannot write yet
the concurrent need to testify
to pull
all the wor/l/ds to the surface
to leave nothing vacant and underneath
these definitional marks
shock me with their ruthless clarity
and it is in the extended sequencing of his grave,
via the outlines that also determine my own corpus
that the publication of his chiselled stone has become fact
the english you are reading, is becoming ornament
every word an etalage
akin to a grave that has been dragged out
into the shyless open, fully discernible in its blatant explicability
where only moon says ‘’moon’’
and sun listens to ‘’sun’’
*meaning: ‘’to swallow’’ in Dutch, my mother tongue
What are the consequences of returning to the region one grew up in, and how can drawings facilitate in re-engaging with this context? Does there need to be a distinction between an old and new drawing, or can they exist side-by-side so that their affective residues remain untethered? In the small poem that is part of the piece, I reappraise the children's drawing and its latent potential for intimate revolt.
Part of What the Flag?! 2023, Greylight Projects (Heerlen, NL).
English title: sway of a childhood drawing
Publication is available on request.
