Letters to Him Who Hides Wastelands Within, Celsius Projects, Malmö
December 2018
Letters to Him Who Hides Wastelands Within I-III, 2018
Part of a larger series
Automatic writing and drawing on semi-transparent paper
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PROCESS:
In these works I take a sheet of semi-transparent paper and fill the page, without stopping, with my own automatic handwriting from start until the end. Every sheet takes about 8 hours to fill. Afterwards I put another semitransparent sheet of paper on top and mark out where the line of thought involuntarily exhausts and changes in the text underneath. Thus marking out the gaps of the continuous stream of thought.
I repeat the process until it is exhausted.
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Kristeva writes:
“Indifferent to language, enigmatic and feminine, this space underlying the written is rhythmic, unfettered, irreducible to its intelligible verbal translation; it is musical, anterior to judgment, but restrained by a single guarantee: syntax.” Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language, 29. New York: Columbia University Press, 1984.
In this process of writing, of emptying myself of language, after a while, an intriguing switch of positions happens; in that extreme task I’ve set myself forward to do, to fill this whole paper from start until the end, without stopping, with all the thoughts that pass through my mind, to register this flow going through me, to externalize it in time and in space – in this, after a while, when the pain and boredom becomes insufferable, when the pain and boredom encompasses my whole being, and hands, back and knees hurt unbearably, something is released, something else takes over, something breaks forth - and then, all of a sudden, it is this something that writes – in the extreme physical restraint, the I dissolves, and forth streams something else; pulsating, un-bound, freed from its form, from the pen, from the hurting hand - all in one - exhausted and enabled, released, embodied and concrete. A substance steps forward, becomes visible.
The form enables, the line enables, the restraints enable, the drive throws itself forward, and realizes that what it aims for is not what it actually gets, and for this moment of realization to occur the process itself is inevitable, the almost insufferable process; the meeting of the material and thought, drive and object, idea and pulse, and in that clash, it emanates, it breaks forth. Then, again, in that moment of breaking down, in that moment of cessation, I wonder – what is this substance, released, freed, from the line, the words? Freed from its upholding line, its carrier; freed from that which binds the I, my I, to time, spatiality? What can It be?
Lispector writes:
“There is a thing that escapes me the whole time. When it doesn’t escape, I gain certitude: life is something else. It has an underlying style.” Lispector, Clarice. Agua Viva, 65. New York: New Directions Books, 2012.
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Excerpt from the text On Becoming The Origo – Martine Flor