All thought utters a roll of the dice.

 

A "translation" of Marcel Broodthaer's "translation" of Stephane Mallarme's poem, "Un Coup de Des Jamais N'abolira le Hasard." In the original work, Mallarme achieves the destruction of syntax, allowing the physical placement of words to be determined by chance - a force he proclaims cannot be abolished. Broodthaer's translation takes the floating semantic driftwood, no longer bound by syntactical structure, and reduces it to mere image. My work uses floating signifiers to destroy semantics altogether - as Mallarme did with syntax - in order to achieve the ultimate state of linguistic existence, post-shipwreck. The ship breaks apart and sinks, its component parts are oxidized and changed beyond recognition as all aspects of "shipness", both visible (syntax) and functional (semantics), leave their forms. What we are left with is a pure script, devoid or meaning and structure, without referent: the signifier stripped away from the signified.

 

 

 

 

 

2012. Exhibition at Tjaden Gallery - Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.