Post 14: Objects on the ground and words on a line

-

I’ve been trying to think of the perspective from which, or the question out of which it occurred to me to think about objects on the ground and words on a line. To think about these two things as being similar scenarios. Have I been thinking of objects on the ground as words on a page? Have I been thinking of the line under words as a ground? Am I asking what happens if I do? 

A lot of the objects I like live on the ground. Ground objects = construction cones, fire hydrants, bushes, mailboxes, recycling bins, etc. Each one of these items has a connecting point to the ground, and is perpendicular to it in a way that resembles words being perpendicular to the lines they stand on. (Stand on?)


Though, a thing about words on lines: It seems true to say that handwritten words are the only words that exist on visible lines (i.e. writing on loose leaf or in notebooks). Which in turn leads me to feel that there’s something about these ground objects that I like, that also happen to be rooted in (or, on) lines of sorts, that have a handwritten feel to them. It’s the kind of right-there-ness to ground objects. They fit in with the personal-ness and imprecise-ness of analog writing. It’s such a great thing the way that imprecision feels like part of the inherent nature of the handwritten. Handwriting is the land of erasing and crossing out and of scratchy or smudged lines; there are really so many fallibilities to the handwritten world, all which feel inconsequential because of how baked into the essence of the process they are. The wear and tear that ground objects receive feels similarly expected.


So…how much do written words on a line have to do with objects on the ground? Maybe the question is: Is to create things for the ground to create things on/for a line? Does the seeming orderliness of placing something on a line intensify how much it is vulnerable to inconsistencies from every other side? 

On the other hand, typed up words (I’ll refer to these as text) never sit on any sort of ground. They only ever seem to appear fairly high up in the air (on signs, billboards, storefronts, etc.) Text doesn’t appear in situations that hint at it having any physical weight (it doesn't "sit"). All of which makes it feel farther away from the characteristics of a ground object, farther from writing on a line. It seems like the higher off the ground you go, the less things have a handwritten feel to them. Which isn’t to say that the reverse of this is applicable (that things always have a more handwritten feel lower down–I wouldn’t say they do), but is to make the point that it becomes funny to put something handwritten high up and something typed on the ground.

I didn’t have an image in mind to include with this post, but it seems appropriate to include this photo I took today. It kind of throws a wrench into the whole post. (Establishes a text ground?)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post 31: The negation of a painting

-
Image
Peaceful photo of an almond that looks like a piece of wood. I’d quickly say that what I want to create is the negation of a painting, but would much more slowly (so slow as to effectively round down to never) reach an articulation of the status of or qualifications to the constitution of such a thing. More than that, I’d say working toward a negation is centrally about proceeding in a certain direction (not a forward one) than about trying to create a negative substance in the end.  The problem (that I face in confronting the idea of making a painting) is that “forward” is supposedly a known direction. Maybe not even supposedly. It just is. And when I think of a painting (something properly and recognizably known as one [which I guess is what is taken for granted when you refer to any term]), I imagine it existing out in front of me (“in front of” implying forward).* Which is not to say that making a painting is a straight-line pursuit, but just that I can’t help but think of a pa...
Read more

Post 38: A few things from The Pond Froze Over at Procession Gallery

-
Image
One wall of The Pond Froze Over The other day, I dashed into what was a radiant and sensitive show up at Procession Gallery, The Pond Froze Over . I stepped through the space with the slightness and waver of a pencil’s line--just in the way that the space’s atmosphere compelled me to; you could not step boldly through the room for you would drown out the sound of the works--quivering as they were as though (or perhaps they actually were) balancing on a singular spot of softness. Early in my arrival, in the midst of getting my bearings, I happened to turn around and face the outside that I came from, and there happened to be someone out there, on the other side of the street, tagging, with black spray paint, a few objects that were leaning against the brick side wall of a building. This filled me with glee. It fulfilled the strange rareness of witnessing someone mark-make while being surrounded by mark-making in the past tense--unwitnessed marks already having been made. These few thoug...
Read more

Post 35: Writing about painting can't be done / writing about some paintings in Wet Diagram

-
Image
It’s interesting that writing about painting sets up a relationship between writing and painting. That to write about a painting is to connect this verb (writing) with this object of the preposition (painting). If writing and painting are two separate domains (are they? aren’t they?), then to write about painting is to draw a line from one domain to the other. Like this: At least, that’s what writing feels like. Line drawing. Though, what does a line mean? As this diagram shows, writing about painting (if that was the title of the diagram) situates painting in space. Writing grounds painting--creates what seems to be an accessible path to it--by putting it in connection to another thing (in this case, to itself: to words). There’s a trickiness here--to the pursuit of writing about painting--because in this diagram, in this conception I have of the project that is writing about painting, writing is both the thing painting is in relationship to, and the act that creates the relationsh...
Read more