Art and experiment, vision of the PLAGUE

[Alan Sondheim]

Art and experiment, vision of the PLAGUE


The IMAGE of three folding wooden rulers, German, millimeter rules:
PLACE these in a triangular configuration: two from the wall down,
one across the endpoints of the two. AS IF these formed an equilateral
triangle, however BROKEN by virtue of the WEIGHT of the wood, the
intrusion of the physico-inert into the virtual-inert of the static
euclidean WORLD.

I do not know or give their LENGTH.

Remnant of memory: Early 1970s Bykert Gallery NY show: collapsed hyper-
cube made from nylon cord - topological accuracy but disrupted per-
ception. The IDEAL held; the perceptual-real, i.e. constructed meaning,
collapsed.

No progress now: This current work represents no progress whatsoever;
the theme is tackled with only the DISTINCTION: the topological is
trivial (a loop) or absent (an irrelevant loop). The MEASUREMENT is
ANALOGIC, the ideal DIGITAL, a world of zero tolerance - well, perhaps
analogic as well.

Can this be? A zero-tolerance analogic world? A wave-equation collapse
or even rounding-off - that REWRITES the digital, INSERTS IT as
permanent markers? Or rather, perhaps it is the zero-tolerance digital
world that REWRITES and analogic, REINSERTS within the analogic.

What of this REWRITE? I have often said: I write myself into existence.
I write myself out of existence. And ONLINE? See early Internet Text,
Nettext sections: Existence is equivalent to CONTINUOUS REWRITE; when
insertion ends (and this is insertion THROUGH the mediation of digital/
analogic means INTO the analogic WETWARE of the perceiving SUBJECT),
MEANING begins.

The ANALOGIC measurement of the rulers, with WEIGHT and problematic or
rough TOLERANCE, is the measure of MEANING as well, coupled with the
idealized MIRRORING of the digital within the analogic (as if the
analogic were a cast-off of the digital, or as if the digital were a
cast-off of the analogic).

The rulers, in their UNGAINLY stance, are a source of DIS/COMFITURE or
the DIS/EASE of GRAVITY. A straight-line bending, inconceivable! The
misplacement of tolerance: Unforgivable!

Yet this is what we are confronting in our cultural-political world
today: digital laissez-faire and the bending of the analogic, as RULES,
not rulers, are bent to meet every contingency: Let us, for example,
over-develop this nation, these wetlands, this war, in the guise of the
ABSOLUTE - of freedom, of god, of Capital. As with the Procrustean
Bed: Cut off what doesn't fit! Purify at all costs! In this regard, the
future is always already cleared, cleansed, and ready for action.

(All development is over-development or under-development.)

Back in the Gallery: I will gather the rulers, take them with me across
the United States, sleeping, measuring only the unease of dreams. Four
of them, found in a small second-hand shop in Copperton, Utah, next to
the Bingham Copper Mine excavation, the largest human-made scar on the
face of the earth. Next time, the plague.


_