ways with words
CALD
Archie Moore, Pamela Mei-Leng See & Thierry Auriac
State Library of Queensland Infozone
14 January – 28 March 2005
Dangling Modifier
Sebastian Moody
Queensland Art Gallery Starter Space
16 February – 19 June 2005
An impulse almost got the better of me. I nearly let out a groan when I saw that CALD, at the State Library of Queensland’s Infozone, was an exhibition of text-based works by culturally and linguistically diverse artists as if some mythic hydra-like monster had been resurrected from the more deeply entrenched myth (read lie) of this country’s innate tolerance. Have we sufficiently shaken off the turgid language of centre and periphery, difference and diversity to be able to engage with such articulations as simultaneously singularised and plural? I know some critics are sceptical about pluralism, thinking it lazy and undisciplined. I will assume that some of us can think of pluralism as a rigorous and disciplined method – not just scattered ‘anything goes-ism’. That’s what CALD attempted and, curatorially, this exhibition wasn’t an exhibition of ‘otherness’ (‘appropriating dominant languages’ or ‘assimilations of/by language’). Given our exposure to information and globalism, asserting or uttering a ‘cultural identity’ is an ever-complex practice. This small exhibition emerges as a trio of works that engage the plurality, confluence and mobility of language and words.
I have observed, mostly because I have been looking for it, a rising interest in text-based art particularly among young artists and Indigenous artists who are working with text, reinventing and negotiating language and words. There appears to be a resurgence of ‘wordings’ (or ways with words) but the word wordings is compelling in this sense – a noun and invented verb that says we do words, we do things with words and it doesn’t always have to mean writing. Writing implies reading whereas wording is concerned less with the reader and more with the composition and expression of the words. And writing is more concerned with inscription. Like, I suppose, texting in the SMS sense. One gets texted inasmuch as one texts. While Mitchell’s formulation of the ‘imagetext’ is compelling, wordings works as action and a way of describing these works as they ripple across the competing tasks of representation and interpretation. At a forum during the Floating Land event in Noosa, Patrick Jones, a participating artist, was talking about his site-specific signage works. He mentioned that in much contemporary text-based artwork there was an overwhelming sense of urgency and anxiety. More so, there’s anxiety in the wording itself in terms of how it is comp(r)osed, visualised, spatialised: whether it is a ‘concrete poem’ or an ‘imagetext’.
When we consider the wording, we take time and care to consider our choices. The works that comprise the CALD exhibition are such carefully chosen words, intended to stand out in an ocean of words, perhaps prised from the pages of books, such as exists within a library. Paradise. A promise. A quest. A destination. Lost. A spray of lotus flowers splash across the black letters of the word, paradise, which hovers above us, well out of reach. We cannot help but look up, above the shelves of earthly knowledge, to see Pamela Mei-Leng See’s Paradise. In Buddhism, the lotus flower in poetry and image is an evocation of the sacred and can denote many things including purity, divine wisdom and faithfulness. Rising as it does from murky muddy waters, the lotus also symbolises the spiritual journey to attain higher consciousness. It is through our deeds and struggles on this earth, by the accounts of most major religions, that we might ascend to paradise. As a once vaunted ‘lucky country’, Australia promised its own rewards of milk and honey - an escape from living hell or ascent to a better life - to those who ventured towards these shores. It is apt that paradise is out of reach because, these days, even those who find their way to its gilt gates, calling for sanctuary or mercy, are expelled without compassion or consideration.
Even though the suggestion is present, these works are not overtly rhetorical as with signage or sloganeering. Vive La Différence is a well-known expression, almost joyous and celebratory in its declaration. As a French expression it is sufficiently familiar in the Anglophone environment to have been assimilated: a call for difference that somehow disguises a push for sameness. It’s an almost empty and meaningless statement, the sort that might appear on a fashion t-shirt or tourism billboard. For Thierry Auriac, there is an almost sceptical intonation in this work where the words do not ring true. In his artist statement he identifies the sorts of differentiations that he’s been exposed to as a ‘foreigner’ in this country: ‘I love your accent’ and ‘go back to your own country’. It somehow seems incongruous that the curator, Tony Stephens, can identify the Western cultural tradition as experiencing ‘very little discrimination’ and that there is an accepting consensual exchange between Anglophone and Francophone (or other European linguistic and cultural) histories. As this country’s migration policy of white Australia (designed to exclude brown-skinned Europeans) attests, it’s not a case of all whiteness being created equal.
Interestingly, there is a loosening up and experimentation with language occurring while the market is flooded with readings about the sanctity and precision of grammar and syntax such as Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It is a time when collective fears of the-ruin-of-English-as-we-know-it prickle amid a whorl of communications technology. Borderlessness is like lawlessness. There are those who will take untold pleasure in this undoing of language. Archie Moore is one of them. His work Scripta Continua 1, 2, 3, 4 is comprised of the words ‘THERAPIST NOWHERE TOGETHER BRAINWASHERS’. The font is of the simple san serif variety. Here Moore reminds us of how much we rely on the rules of grammar and syntax so as to show us the way through a text and illuminate its intent. Little wonder there is so much anxiety about the written word. Take even the smallest liberty and meaning is threatened. Misplaced spaces and punctuation point to the instability of communication in this written form. Where there is writing, there is a suggestion of reading or of something that can be read. Reading is itself an act of deciphering and it is this that Moore has brought into sharp focus by suggesting that the spaces in this phrase can be changed so as to produce another meaning or reading of this arrangement of letters.
In a similar vein, in the Queensland Art Gallery’s Starter Space, Sebastian Moody is exhibiting his wording, Dangling Modifier. Like Moore, Moody is concerned with the rules of grammar and the ways that ambiguity can interrupt an obvious statement being ‘Despite its being frequently associated with pretentious notions, her belief in art was unshakeable’. The font is well rounded with serifs, almost old-fashioned, a little like Book Antiqua. If you know about grammar then the title of the work gives it away. We immediately know there is an ambiguity in this text, and if we’re not on top of our grammar then we would have drawn our own conclusion about what the ‘its’ actually refers to (‘her belief’ or ‘art’). The reading is interrupted and the reader needs to pause to consider the possible variations. Moody seems to make the most of an intertextual contrivance involving reading across the didactic panel, title and the wording. The work is comprised of multiple readings and multiple texts. In reading the didactic panel, you need to re-read the text to see what happens through the different readings of ‘its’. There is also a choice to be made, almost a challenge to be accepted, by the reader/viewer. If we accept the ‘its’ as referring to ‘art’, then we must somehow respond to the mischievous assertion that art is associated with ‘pretentious notions’. What are we to make of or do with that? Perhaps laugh at our complicity in a joke played on us at our own expense?
These works, as wordings, are all comprised of carefully chosen words. Words, in and of themselves, do not peddle certainty or truth. New technologies have caused us to consider language, to examine the ways in which language and technology are intrinsically bound. Some of these artists have drawn our attention to the technical aspects of written language, subverting various rules, while others have asked us to look closely at the words/images themselves to reflect on how we come to understand them. Just as there are understandings and misunderstandings to be had, there are also choices to be made regarding interpretation and meaning. Much of Western culture is reliant on the immutable truth of the written word (as law, as doctrine, as scripture) and these artists all question the wisdom of this faith. They suggest that this faith is perhaps misplaced given the ambiguity, anxiety and doubt that can come of being ‘worded’.
