Words A Users Manual
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
"Things may look normal and natural, but a word is but a faux-naif talisman, a structurally unsound platform from which to sound off, as a world of total and horrifying chaos will soon start to show through its sonorous inanity. A gap will yawn, achingly, day by day, a gradual invasion of words by margins, blank and insignificant, so that all of us, to a man, will find nothing to say." Georges Perec.
When things around or within us seem to disintegrate, it seems that the arbitrary nature of words and their corresponding concepts distances our real selves from true, lived experience. This atmosphere of mistrust was particularly ripe in the years post the world wars during the Dada and Futurist movements, during which language was literally reduced to nonsense: sounds and rhythmic symbols that refused narrative, devoid of meaning. If language embodies the ideology of a culture, then to deny one's culture, one must defy its language.
'Text' is a codified system of signs and signifiers, with symbols that represent each word, syllable and letter. When written, these letters contain a shape and form; when spoken, they carry a certain sound and character; and when strung together in a deliberate order, they assume a concept, a meaning and an effect.
'Art', in contrast, is a mode of perception, without a 'said', essential meaning. A text object becomes an art object specifically when it attempts to transcend itself: where the story-or the absence of it-does not necessarily signify anything, rather the meaning is contained in its form. And thus do Perec's tricks with words inspire this set of seven artists from diverse disciplines to play with the physiology of type, storytelling, books and paper.
