William C. Gutiérrez-Villamizar.

First e-diction.

Signified/Signifier/Significant.Towards a Comprehensive Written Art.

ArtisticAffairsBureau.

ABSTRACTThe following is an essay to set the theoretical framework for an Art practice that considers “writing as (if) media; language as (if) plastic and subject matter.” Such ap-proach is possible through the implementation of con-cepts as translation poetics, politic-of-aesthetics, and re-creative writing to the traditional readings of concrete po-etry, conceptual art, and creative writing throughout its common-history. The result is a series of experiments stored using Transmedia documentation methodologies, as a response to the problems derived from the displaced nature of the artwork when installed into the art circuit, enabling the emergence and definition of Comprehensive Written Art.

1 !! Language -the written word- and Art -image-based repre-sentation- share their fundamental basis (a purpose) whose purport could be essentially described as an hermeneutic principle1: the capacity to store/transfer knowledge through the mastership of technologies -devises and abilities- devel-oped to explain, translate, and interpret events/happenings which, as consequence, are to become matter of history.In a sense, both approaches aim to re-create a definition of world simultaneously, a fact as evident as their radical (of- the-root) difference, from the codes of interpretation/transmission to the media/strategies taking part in each proc-ess. Although far from behaving as opposite forces, their cor-respondence renders rather complementary, especially when it comes to compensate each other’s lacks.

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Language in Art.

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Such reciprocity is indeed a matter of systematized re-cognition and transference; one significantly mediated2. Hence, in order to identify its origin and preconditions, the execution of a methodology ad hoc based on the ground of media archeology 3 is suggested since the necessary con-ditions to configure an effective system of knowledge trans-mission are inter-determined by the tech-no-logical devel-opments available at a certain moment, and the cultural transformation derived from its extensive implementation through history. In fact, if we have learned anything from the motley media archeology definitions is that relay -from memory as neurophysiology phenomenon to computerized data storage- tends to delay 4, and there’s no new media penetration rate, neither update cycle frequency, nor pro-grammed obsolescence that could compensate this fact. “Technology is entrenched in our history.5 ”

! The complexity complex yielded by these two reality oper-ating systems throughout the diachronic Fluxus of references that constitutes the basis for their shared policy of subordina-tion, and articulates (with all its ambivalence) the parameters under each party managed to configure their particular (albeit unspecific) attempt of purpose at the same time, can be exem-plarily “illustrated” through a paper-sheet-deep review on how images and words have been co-operating during The Ages in the assemblage of both Art and Media histories:

! There was a time when information-war’s landscape was rather symbolic and yet fully operational. Back then, the group (be)holding the most significant bibliographic catalog was the ruling one; even if that implied the enforcement of systematic inquisitive violence aimed to extinguish others’ valuable posses-sions -especially if inspired by matters other than the reigning pataphysic beliefs. Such collections of handcrafted copies were not only precious, but also subject(s) of a restrictive inside-policy of loan(word), tracing over its indexed pages cer-tain character of private-domain-cognizance-heritage, com-pelled by protectionist measures against others’, equally inquisi-tive, expropriation policies. Being that so, if a congregation needed to convert mobs into loyal followers, they had to use their knowledge assets as bait. But beforehand issuing a edi-tion “for dummies” of such obscure wisdom, transcribed with sleight on the holly books of choice, it had to be translated into a language accessible to the wildly illiterate masses. Motivating the extensive repertoire of hanged imaginary, representative of the time, due its capacity not only occupy flat surfaces and minds, but flatten history as well. Nonetheless, the occupation process not only depended on reproducing as many images as possible, they had to move, be pathetic, in a sense, and since the word was (at) the beginning, the iconologists knew that the motif assortment had to be far from random. Then, a set of codified meanings matching the fellowships’ interpretation of the scripture’s was created, and with it arbitrary symbolisms

Art’s Language; Language in Art.

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were composed over the figure of each creature or thing ever portrayed within the frame -of reference; grammar became composition, and ideology collective imaginary. As conse-quence, the economy of meaning instruction was made paint-ing, and dwelled amongst those able to make sense out its pic-tures as long as it kept paying dividends to the hierarchy. This imperative remained unbroken, even after illustrators were granted permission to reproduce profane stories (the descent of divine in the royal-scape) and technical updates were intro-duced, there was no other medium that could match the pow-ers of the written word and its divine law as the ultimate mani-festation of truth. Such was the domain of the Signification Em-pire that we are still dealing with the remains of the commands dictated though (de)generations along the regime.

! It didn’t really matter how much time needed to pass-by, neither if dealing with figurative or abstract references: the word is the law, and the law is go(o)d. But there was another contribution to be amused with: the rise of its innovative (art-specific) terminology. In it, the scripted (later typed) monopoly was designated to fund the dictatorship of the ontological misin-terpretation of reality as representation of the metaphysical, making it possible, for an ambiguous technolect as this, to tran-scend the limits of its media transference rate, and become both subjective (un)consciousness and Science -of the beauty. Although, the latter was the favorite of the knowledgeable mi-

nority, they soon learned to rephrase the discipline dedicated to the empiric study of being-in-the-world in a single concept: aesthetics 6. On the bright side, the symbolic occupation of exis-tence required/demanded that (visual) literacy became “a thing” (subject matter) on its way to become a matter of public domain as collateral damage; the closest one could get to de-mocracy, given the (lack of) conditions. “Being able to read was not the same as being allowed to write 7.”

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

Benjamin The Scrivener 8

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1. Although, originally, the term hermeneutics refers to the process of interpretation mainly related to written expressions, further analysis lead to un-derstand the process in terms of more general phenomena such the consciousness of being (Heidegger). Hence, its importance, when ap-plied to Language and Art theory, and its com-plex relationship; the introduction of the written word (a relatively late event in the history of hu-man communication) has completely changed the terms under the cultural landscape (History) was shaped though oral tradition, for example, and the many different ways artist have man-aged to interpreted reality, which have had a di-rect impact on the definition of the art practice, conceptually and practically speaking. See: Bjørn Ramberg and Kristin Ramberg, "Herme-neutics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philoso-phy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zal-ta (ed.), accessed May 1st, 2013

2. The writer doesn’t write what he wants, but what he can -not paint. Despite being subject of détournement, Nietzsche’s famous quote on skill, has critical media/medium management im-plications: “our writing tools are also working in our though,” he wrote. Nietzsche quoted by Frie-drich Kittler in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 200.

3. In spite there is not such thing as a fixed defini-tion of media archeology, we could say that its purpose and methodologies are to media (stud-ies) what philology is to language (hence, written language analysis. Both disciplines avail them-selves with the entire analytical repertoire at their disposal in order to approach their subjects com-prehensibly. Thus, every category of knowledge

is welcome contribute to the task as long as it provides relevant information that leads to the accomplishment of what might well be the Ge-samtkunstwerk (total artwork, as introduced by the german aesthetes in reference to Wagner’s Operas) of humanistic research.

4. The electronic revolution has been around for over half of a century, but we have started to ex-perience the socio-cultural shift and its implica-tions until relatively recent. See: Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media. (Michigan: The MIT Press, 2001), accessed April 18th, 2013,

5. Heidegger quoted by Friedrich Kittler in Gramo-phone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 1999): 200.

6. The misinterpretation of the philosophy of art or aesthetics as the discipline responsible for the common acceptance of concepts likewise taste, sublime, genius and a lot more others, comes from their contextual specificities condi-tioning those questionable definitions of art/artist. But now there’s no reason for us to keep thinking on aesthetics as a formal study of Art or an specific visual style, but as a system of constant exchange of experiences in which the ground zero is conformed after processes of consensus and dissent take place; a political act by definition. See: Jaques Rancière, Sobre políticas estéticas -On Aesthetic politics- (Bar-celona, Spain: Ed Universitat Autónoma de Bar-celona, 2005).

7. Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 184.

8. It wasn’t until 1970’s that “experimentally in-clined language poets proposed a way the reader could, in fact, become the writer. By at-omizing words across a page, coupled with dis-rupting normative modes of syntax, they felt that the nonhierarchical linguistic landscape would encourage a reader to reconstruct such text as they saw it fit...demonstrating that the textual field is unstable, comprised of ever-shifting sign and signifiers, thereby unable to be claimed by either author or reader as authoritative. If the reader were able to recon-struct the open text, it would be as (un)stable and as (un)meaningful as the author’s. The end result would be a level playing field for all, debunking the twin myths of both the all-powerful author and passive reader.” Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing: managing lan-guage in the digital age (NY: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 2011): 153

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

Once the occupation of the entire scope of visual artists’ pro-ductive role as transcription-translators is recognized, the abiding exchange of misconceptions, on interpretation and at-tribution of meaning, between these two “modes of re-presentation”, leaves the impression that such correspon-dence is being based on an operative restraint that demands one of the parties to be at service of the other as a contin-gency measure; filling each other’s blanks for the sake of both high and popular culture in absolute synchronization. An attitude manifest in the pragmatic distinctions outlined be-tween Art Writing and Written Art

! The first, is founded under full awareness (not yet, com-plete understanding) of the gap amongst theory and practice (thinking or doing), motivating the establishment of a certain theory of subjectivity in which written/printed text was, without question, the media par excellence (there wasn’t much com-

petition, anyways), through which authors, making their best effort to attribute truly significant meaning to artistic expres-sions, sought immortality doing the paper-work (filling and fil-ing) required for the validation of their inexplicable contribu-tions as part of the (equally unverifiable) official History of his-tory and aesthetics. Hence, a conflict of interests is evident: if the whole purpose of developing a system dedicated to the transmission of knowledge such visual art is supported on the idea of triggering with ease as many interpretations as possible, then why restrain the interpretative range of the viewer/reader under a text-based authoritarianism? And more importantly, from where does such desperate need for legiti-macy come, in the first place?

! Truth-be-told, all the evidences indicate that the reason why the exclusive code-language of visual arts/artists isn’t self-sufficient appears-to-be the aftermath of a misunderstanding of the original misunderstanding, hence, making it impossible to es-tablish a zero degree stable enough to support the conditions needed to become a matter of public domain, or what is the same, it was imperative to set up a theoretical context (refer-ences) that could compensate the displaced nature of artifacts. As result, it became standard procedure to put a piece of text next to every art piece to ensure its meaning recognition, start-ing from the title. Thus, it was inevitable that the early symptoms of autism aesthetics showed became an issue of public health.!

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Printing as (if) Art -of Typing: Writing as (if) Imprint.

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

! ! As expected, it was a matter of time before the situation got out of control (too many text, too little meaning), and the next thing art students, non-textual artist, and free-lance art-writers knew, was that relying on a (pre)fixed theo-retical repertoire was part of the new deal: the standardiza-tion policy of art writing promised a certain level of tolerance towards mediocrity (which was a huge relief, indeed) as long as the forms were kept, and by forms they refer to the use of formalistic (almost bureaucratic) language, and the inclusion of indexed (short-list) authors and key words to support each mayor argumentation; the quotation quota was officially insti-tutionalized! As consequence, we learned to accept our mini-mum wage labor conditions, the grey-area of industrial pro-ductivity where the increase on the demand necessarily means the decrease of the product’s quality. And since our crisis is someone else’s opportunity, even those suffering from starvation pain found a way to do business by trading personal criteria for endorsed bibliography ready to be re-typed ad nausseam.

! It has never been so clear, the main goal of today’s ap-prentice of copy-writer is no other than reaching the precise amount of published material required to maintain their status in the community: an exhibition has to have a catalog, flyers/invitation, a poster and a introductory text, a junior curator/researcher has to publish a critique review or essays

at least 3 times a year, a young artist must have a portfolio and be able to submit proficiently as many open calls as it’s humanly possible, and the list goes on... Luckily, the editorial staff at publishing houses and local presses couldn’t care less if all this was or not worth writing, read, or printed as long as the business (press) kept on running, regardless if the commitment implied such drastic measures as making profit out of selling the product directly to recycling factories: “whatever it takes” is the motto to ensure sustainability be-fore the business goes completely digital, where content rele-vance deals in absolutes (from crucial as read on peer re-viewed journals with consistent editorial guidelines, to merely accessory as seen in tabloids with more screen area dedi-cated to advertising than to its exhibitionist-trends reviews) and what’s worst, to achieve written mastership, either case demands, is as complicated as understanding how profit is even possible under those terms.

! No wonder, then, why professional art-writer’s reply to the undergoing word-cased scenario is the compulsive need to update and share the database of framing candidates fit-ting the template of bush-league-writing, as an attempt prove in public that writing sloppier than their own was possible. Ac-tually, the Arts Writers Union has already chosen its brand-new scapegoat, and even gave it a funny name: International Art English9; after arguing that what initially appeared to be a

Art’s Language; Language in Art.

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harmless jargon with a rare accent, turned up being a highly contagious langue de bois10, reaching epidemic scales after decades dedicated to reductive translations of French theory, chiefly, transforming core concepts into flat argumentative for-mulas meant to refill printed copies of internationally distrib-uted art-journals. The extent of the impact attributed to this newspeak is as hard to ignore as it is to determine; as-matter-of-facts, it has got to a point where is more accurate to as-sume that its influence, over the so-called academic fashion dominating English language art writing, is ubiquitous11.

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! Written Art, in the deft hand, presents itself as an alterna-tive the scenario to explore language’s vast expressive potential once it’s resources started to be widish as media and -plastic- matter13, instead of being subject to the supremacy of dexter-ously executed policies of media management, replicating the “grammatologistics” ingeniously dictating/, since the times of epic storytelling, that true domain of language is a plaisir du texte reserved only to the word-masters.

!! The aftereffect of this early gestures was consigned in all sort of scribbles, traced with no other intention than the experi-ence itself; not so, without noticing the advantage of putting their attempts on the record: The more resources a (self-managed) data base has, the faster its feedback loop could result on rele-vant updates. (though, excessive code processing could end up crashing the whole reference system before a zero degree is could be even ready to install. But In spite first timers’ distinctive clumsiness, this experimental approach has proven to be the cornerstone of the legitimate expansion of Written Art’s afflu-ence, as if it was another medium with history or tradition in the arts, subject, just like any other, to the unknown effects of aes-thetic alchemy, the same in-comprehensible procedure that once gave birth to both poetic images and visual poetry as if the logic outcome the opposition principle is applied to self-explicatory language-based (re)creation. Notwithstanding the effort, “actual poetry” was still doing time in its golden cage of dyed paper, since it was too hard to imagine/understand/handle such impressive language manifestations beyond the set of me-dia specifically designed to support and store its imposed instru-mental essence. And since there is no history without a stable system of categorization, uncertainty is a luxurious commodity that couldn’t be afforded, at least not yet, as long as the link be-tween language’s materialization and conceptualization keeps being subject to trans-codification processes in Beta phase.

" Translators need to transcend transcendentalism.!

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“Writing functioned as universal medium in times where there was no concept of medium.” (Kittler)

The subsequent implications are clear, but not less daunting; no matter how well-documented or evident it be, the undergo-ing process of referential correspondence between both text-based and image-based systems of inter/re-presentation, each code will remain confined in its own parallel reality when operative/operational in a common context, like those possible after a decisive contribution of the avant-garde movements; the official introduction of concerns inherent to language theory (interpretation, referentiality and significa-tion) as subject-matter, and its following inclusion into the for-mal repertoire of visual art14, including its formerly exclusive media framework/mainframe.

! Once more, written language failed to overthrow the imposition of its third-kind status, as image-complementary (even if composed as an image itself) or supportive charac-ter (backup storage) in the meaning recognition logistics re-mained to be considered its definitive contribution to aes-thetic and its theory. Not even after the subsequent neo-revivals of the written manifestations15 that found the basis of Conceptual Art’s16 - and its filial branches- declaration of attempt -when writing-based art finally appeared to reach formal and conceptual maturity-, the introduction of lan-guage as a plastic matter, couldn’t negotiate in its favor the conditional/conditioned nature of the correspondence be-tween signified, signifier, and referent, no matter how self-referential, it always lacked complete media/medium-content-context cohesion. Hence, if text-based art insisted to achieve the institutional validation granted to hegemonic

theories, techniques, and mediums and media, first it had to undergo a transitional stage of extensive implementation of its alternative/ experimental methodologies by replicating (in its own terms, at least) the production and circulation strategies distinctive of those same traditional mediums of expression it critiqued, or worse, after text-specific (mas-sive) media got aestheticized (not before proper validation through theoretical means) when these writing-friendly-surfaces hosting low-resolution impressions of the definition of Art as Idea as Idea, were tactically reframed, emulating the etiquette proper of the real classics, in order to fit among them -if ever considered collectables. Yet, the tactic was so effective that the sponsors felt the urge to admit its aesthetic value demanded certification and a price tag, which automatically turned this, rather exotic, creatures, into ordinary, but well conserved, stuffed animal, purchased to decorate, with its representative presence, the interior de-sign of Art History’s Freak Show (world-touring) caravan.

! Decades passed, and happy-ending episodes as such were regular show. Soon, Written Art’s production, means, and methodologies were unable outsmart, or simply dodge, the policies of content recycling and generic translation of mass media. The fundaments of what was supposed to be a doctrine-free interpretation model, became symbolic currency due market share negotiations between agencies, and now face its definitive fate as fragments and/or deformed refer-

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ences, vaguely recognizable under their dead-metaphor uni-forms, awaiting to be reposted by armies of copy-writers on deadline, as another disposable curiosity, byproduct of adver-tising’s Frankenstein effect and its ravenous consumption of catchy phrases and stylistic leftovers, found-as-new in the crammed trashcans gathered at the end of every vernissage.

“What if you let the work speak for itself, absent any puffery? What if a copy/tag-line was written to simplify rather than deceive? You might end up with an piece like this” (Not-Balsessari)

Art’s Language; Language in Art.

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A Fountain by Richard Mutt. Remixed media (replica).Marcelo Delcampo, 2014

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9. Alix Rule & David Levine, International Art English, Tri-ple Canopy 16 (NY, United States: June 2012), ac-cessed June 21st 2013.

10. Translated as doubletalk, newspeak or even waffle, the expression langue de bois emerged in the tsarist Rus-sia, coined by communist militants referring to the am-biguous terminology used by the political establishment to facilitate their dubious legislative duty by confusing the masses with non-arguments hard to understand and, hence, to refute; acquired its current meaning in the France post May of 68’ revolt. See: Gilles Guilleron, Langue de Bois, Decryptage irreverebcieux de poli-tiquement correct et de dessous de la lague. Au Pied De La Lettre. (Paris: Éditions First, 2010).

11. Although Rosler questions both the objectivity and meth-odology of Rule & Levine’s research on the rise of art-world’s press release, she also acknowledges that a nar-rative of dominance as such is deeply embedded in the modern history of the English language in which the ex-ercise of power dialectics is crucial during the process through which it became the world’s official language of economy, government and entertainment industries (art included). See: Martha Rosler, English and all that, e-flux journal #45, accessed April 5th 2014.

13. At this point a disambiguation between the terms media and medium must take place before a comprehensive defi-nition of Written Arts’ expressive means could emerge. Above all there’s the syntactic distinction where medium is a singularity: an individual (transference/ transmission) channel, and media a multiplicity: a cluster of mediums re-lated to each other, as understood in media studies. Below (and here’s comes the confusion) there’s the reading of aesthetic theory, where medium is a category attributed to an artwork in accordance to its materials and methods of

production, and media is just a short for mass media. So, when we claim that written language be treated as both media and –subject- matter (medium), we are suggesting the possibility to work on the problems inherent to the phi-losophy of language in the field of arts, using its own qualities/properties as medium for understanding. But, in order to achieve it, its media spectrum has to transcend mass media coverage, since written language is facing a transformation phase after the electronic revolution ad-vances. We must exploit this unique opportunity to jail-break its operating system, and set the basis of a practice that expands beyond the limits of instrumentality of both production and distribution of meaning.

14. From the cubist exploration of the visual capabilities of words, through Dada’s exploration of already-made writings (automatic writing, collage, phonetic poetry, etc) and Surrealist’s inquiry in the meaning of art/language as representational modes to the revolution-ary policies of provocation movements such the Inter-national Lettrism and Situationism manifested. See: George L. Dillon, Image Text and Other Mixed Modes (United states: University of Washington, 1999) ac-cessed April 18th 2013,

15. This is the case of Art Manifestos, where the idea of art theory becomes practical (literature) first arose, an ap-proach so successful that unfortunately became for-mula too rapidly. See: Alex Danchev, 100 Artist’s Mani-festos, From Futurists to the Stuckist (NY, United States: Penguin Books, 2011).

16. Here the textual ban on visual arts was completely sub-verted into a pure-idea, pure-text sort of art, as seen in the works of Baldesari, Kosuth, Nauman, Weiner and Art and Language, for example. See also: Alexander Al-berro, Conceptual Art and the Politics of Publicity (Michi-

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

! To find frustrating the idea of poetry as the most repre-sentative example of Written Art (as if was just art of writing), and translation as its conjoined strategy of transmission is a commonplace we have learned to identify by force of coer-cion. It is precisely there, where no for satisfactory correspon-dences between the source-code and its derivation occur or even expected, that’s where the cradle of frustration sets its foundations. Thus, performing an act translation (an act, be-cause is pretended -and pretentious), especially when it comes to poetry, worse if through languages without trace-able common roots, implies that each actor of the conflict has to be prepared (beforehand) for the negotiation of a loss 17, one both unavoidable and ruthless (another infamous fact. In most cases the transformations (monstrous mutations, if pre-ferred) undergone end up rendering the original signified mat-ter as an unrecognizable symbolic mass (letter-barf), and the stylistic sacrifice is done willingly as long as some preserva-

tion be barely possible. Despite the multiple deformations and mutilations suffered, throughout such violent editorial exer-cise, a loyal transformer still assays to keep the fundamental promise: to leave the source’s spirit far away from the confron-tation field, and make sure it shows up intact in the following reinterpretation. But make no miss-take, here the only genu-ine trace of creative thinking is to justify ones voracious butch-ery for the sake of a better signification, or even more, to be-lieve that the whole keyboard-raping sequence is worth read-ing. Such is, indeed, the curse translators are subject to; al-ways operating under negative figures/standards, yet eager to celebrate every single outcome with signs of positive charge, no matter how slight might it be.

! But “is this the only possible scenario, I mean, for real? ” -Many have inquired, yet few heard a proper reply. What if performing deliberately deviant translations, in which the loss-party is banned from the negotiation board, was a viable legis-lation? Such rare case of literary forgiveness implies that the fundamental restraint (the loss-party representatives) be con-sidered as a poetic/creative force based on a de/re-codification process focused on utterance multiplicity rather than on the assumption that one part is the original and the other a, more or less faithful, reproduction. May-it-be(come) a third-way, if translation and poetics combine/merge in the con-

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Poetry is what getsfound lost (On translation).

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

cept of translation poetics, for example? If so, could this model of free-interpretation suit the parameters of Compre-hensive Written Art? The answers to these questions are far from being definitive, they depend on the applied definitions of the terms implied, and how we choose to put them in play through the whole transfiguration process.

! If, for example, we agree that a definition of poetry as a metaphor-based practice - literally the act of re-emplacing (in this case, meanings)– makes perfect sense, we could then attribute certain poetic potential to the act of translation it-self18, therefore enabling us to re-cognize plausible a con-cept like translation poetics as such.

! But before getting any further, this replacement exercise must be applied not only to poetry in its traditional sense (that would be just the beginning). To keep expanding the in-terpretative scope of the terms poetry and poetics, according to our particular version of Written Art, going back to the roots and see if we can rediscover its essence and restore long forgotten meanings that empower the conception of al-ternatives readings, is a must-do. Once undergone, the ge-nealogical quest let us identify the etymology of the term po-etry in the Greek language: starting from the source-word poiein -to do- and, which later turned into poiesis, meaning “creative thinking”, from which its traditional sense derived

along with other related terms19. This sequence of linguistic morphing leaves us with an encouraging first impression, af-ter already revealing three fundamental principles of what is to become the essence of our ever-evolving definition of Comprehensive Written Art:

! First, the distinction between doing and thinking is not as radical as it might seem at the beginning, in fact, the mor-phological similarities of both words suggest these aren’t op-posite but complementary stadiums of Being, drawing the ex-act same diagram of hermeneutic reciprocity found between visual arts and written language.

! Second, the term creativity -generative doing and think-ing- could be considered as the logic outcome of being aware of Being, which is no small thing if thought from the perspective of the origin of language –first gesture, then voice and finally image/text (thinking on pictography).

! And third, the fact that word poetry ended up denoting the creative potential of the act of writing, whose principal ex-ample is that well-known paraliterary gender characterized by sequences of words arranged in rhythmical patterns used in pre-history to ease remembrance (mnemonics), but also flexible enough to include the basis for more abstract inter-

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pretations, like concrete and conceptual poetry or even un-creative writing, is a clear sign of how deeply embedded is the conception of language as the purest manifestation of thought in western philosophy, and yet, traces a direct link between both thinking/theory and doing/practice as a the benchmark for the relationship that written language and visual/plastic art hold, made evident in the epistemological approach supporting practice-based research model; the same under which this project has been inscribed.

“A concept is no A word, therefore cannot be translated... It is the operation of a displace-ment of the ordinary form of connection be-tween states of things and meaning 20”

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17. Umberto Eco, Decir Casi Lo Mismo –To Say Al-most The Same-, trans., Lozano Millares, Helena (Colombia: Ed. Lumen, Random, House Monda-dori, S.A, 2008).

18. The example given by Rilke, a poet well known not only for his prolific work, but also for his poetry translations, often considered richer than the origi-nal pieces. See: Guy Deutcher, The Unfolding of Language (Great Britain: Arrow books, 2005).

19. Ricardo Soca, La fascinante historia de las palabras (Colombia: Ed. Rey + Naranjo, 2010): 156-7

21. Jaques Rancière, Interview with Pablo Bustinduy, The Conversant (Summer 2013), accessed March 10th 2014,

! To override the fact that the critical mass of pop-culture reap-offs and remakes have proven, with spectacular elo-quence, its lack of contextual coherence as the basic compo-nent behind the epidemic of headline platitudes eagerly re-printed in a daily basis (as long as a middling translation could be outlined) to correspond with immediacy the logic of market speculation; we must render the possibility of install-ing our alternative version of Written Art precisely where cor-porative communication has failed to convince the public. Pre-cisely since the public domain is the ideal scenario to experi-ment, through language, with a consensus-based model of knowledge transmission in which the ideology of emancipa-tion could actually be practiced, if the artist/writer manages to adapt the principles of the aesthetic-of-politics22 to his (writ-ten) work. Writing has finally met its photography23, it means that the conditions to configure a Middle-Ground Term24 had

finally arose; the written word now has the possibility to tran-scend the hegemony of any given media to which it has been attached, and achieve comprehensiveness once subject and plastic matter become a direct response to their context

! In theory, to re-signify liminal expressions such graffiti art/writing is possible if we find a way to re-contextualize the terms of both medium and content as an active reply to the issue of public-ity 25, for example, addressing their origin and production settle-ments: from politic critique to facade design and back to artistic prac-tice. Imagine or picture, in other words, context-specific reinterpreta-tions of Nauman's neon-text pieces, Kosuth’s self-referential installa-tions, or even Weiner’s wall-art and statements as (if) public inter-ventions capable to inquire about their own sense/means/ends as both artwork –references- and written -manifestations. Under the right circumstances, a comprehensive methodology like this, could be stable enough to enable the required operations of content, me-dia, and matter re-contextualization in practice, where platforms, in-cluding those less charged aesthetically and politically as the ones taking place on the Internet -whose hermeneutic transcendence is disguised with everyday-life buribunkdom-, are subject to become another representative example of the raw materials constituting an alternative typology of Written Art, in which the transformation of any writing phenomenon into its own media and subject matter is possible as long as the self-referential code be implemented throughout every replacement/translation process.

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Renegotiating (The Terms and conditions of)

A Loss.

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Art’s Language; Language in Art.

! What would happen to our practical definition of aes-thetic theory/experience, if the protocol-texts (we no longer read at every exhibition/catalog) were replaced by (curated) YouTube or Reedit comment feeds, or art history’s seminal statements were re-written as Art Student Owl26 memes27? We don’t know yet, but such are the possibilities of (open-resource) translation poetics, aimed to be described and per-formed throughout this paper, an experimental framework where writing is no longer conceived as an instrumental disci-pline nor ornamental craft, but as cultural expressions self-aware of its operative conditions and potential to redefine, the purpose of visual arts and written language equally, as parts of the same meta-discourse in progress.

Art’s Language; Language in Art.

16

22. Paraphrasing Rancière, the aesthetic-of-politics consist on generating (re-creating) spaces of dissent that allow/enable making politics (policies to be constantly re-written/stated), in other words, the reconfiguration/redistribution of the real/sensible by virtue of categories not sublime nor properly relational, where different/alternative objects (me-dia) and subjects –matters- (mediums) are introduced, and therefore voices and languages yet-unheard/unseen emerge. See: Jaques Rancière, Sobre políticas estéticas -On aesthetic politics (Barcelona, Spain: Ed Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, 2005).

23. In the digital era writing practice has experienced an aper-ture similar to what happened to painting when photogra-phy first appeared. See: Kenneth Goldsmith “Provisional Language” Ricardo Boglione, editor, Crux Desperation 1: A Journal of Conceptual Writing (Montevideo, 2011) ac-cessed March 1st.

24. From “political third –party-” (Rancière) as an encounter of equal-heterogeneous which results on a third intelligence or a Third Mind on Gysing and Burroughs’ words; a phe-nomenon that also invokes the heideggerian concept for “junction of beings”. Therefore, the Middle-ground (term) is ultimately a state/stage of transition of contextual (re)place-ment of meaning. See: William S. Burro, El Término Me-dio (Bogotá, Colombia: Ed. Cero 29, 2011).

25. “Publicity” refers to the different models of political repre-sentation of a community in the public sphere -from the Agora to the Parliament. See. Jurgen Habermas, Historia y Crítica de la Opinión Pública -History and critique of pub-lic opinion- (Mexico: Ed. Gustavo Gili, 1997).

26. Know your Meme: Student Owl”, accessed April 18th 2013.

27. The word meme comes from the Greek mimema, “some-thing imitated”, and by force of repetition, media scholars had finally acknowledge it as the minimum unit of significa-tion on digital age communications. See: Kenneth Gold-smith, “Why conceptual Writing? Why Now” Against Ex-pression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing

2Mise en Abyme : Written Art as (if) Contex-specific.

Throughout the text the as (if) formula has been appearing repeatedly, and probably we are used to its forms by now, but what hasn’t been already written is the reason behind the recurrence. Perhaps is due a rupture with “reality”; the abyss that occupies most part of writing’s landscape, perhaps is the last resort in order to foresee an scenario where a Comprehensive Written Art can actually take place; an exercise of creative thinking, may-be too close to an act of faith. Perhaps is both and not precisely either one. That’s the uncertainty intended when writing “as (if)”, the only thing certain is ambivalence; the place of language and specially of the written word as the support of thought, the ground zero where what might be concurs with what actually is.

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! This can be described as fiction poetics, the fundamental agreement that makes possible a displacement of the relation-ships between the significant, imaginative and narrative func-tions that shape a/certain “reality”... Fiction is not unreality, is the unfolding of mechanisms that disregard pre-established relation-ships/ connections between signs and images, between how some signify and others “make visible.29”!! In this sense, what-is-to-be renders as an ascertainable ex-periment, since the “representation in the abyss of presence is not an accident of presence; the desire of presence is, on the contrary, born from the abyss (the indefinite multiplication) of rep-resentation, from the representation of representation, etc. The supplement itself is quite exorbitant, in every sense of the word.30” Words in every sense, that’s what we came looking for since the beginning of this journey of serial typing. What makes worth thinking on language and write about it immediately after, and start all over again when new information comes along: the self-referential and cross-indexed cycle of both, fiction and Be-ing at its finest. Lets state the obvious: we all are fictional charac-ters, as well as our (written) language. It’s been said already many times, in many different ways, in fact. From Zarathustra though the Hassan-i-Sabbah in Alamut to his doppelgänger in Cities of the Red Night, and now is our turn to remember it:

28. The literal translation would be “placed into abyss,” but its heraldic origin suggests that “droste effect” suits better meta-discursive designs. An exemplifi-cation of the “abyss effect” can be seen in composi-tions where an image is replicated ad infinitum within itself. In art theory is used it to describe de meta-gestures: a play within a play, or writing about texts on language. See: Stuart Whatling, Medieval “mise en abyme”, (London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2009), accessed May 5th 2014.

29. See: Jaques Ranciére, Sobre políticas estéticas, (Barcelona, Spain: Ed Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona, 2005).

30. Jaques Derrida, Of Grammatology, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997): 205

31. The latest manifestation of this statement (Nothing is true, everything is permitted) has achieved mas-sive recognition since its appearance in the Assas-sin’s Creed franchise, but despite the lightness of the new host (context), the redundancy exercise can only reinforce the sense and relevance of a looping iteration as this.

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“No referent is absolutely real; every writing-medium is permitted 31”

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

! In order to fulfill the requirements that a comprehensive Written Art suggests,  the contextual restraints must cease to exist -at least as restraints. Once we have acknowledged that writing has no longer an specific media to be related with, a broader panorama, where each possible media(ted) imple-mentation of the written word can be understood as plastic language and subject matter (a self-referential medium), un-folds. This could happen if the content consigned addresses the implications of the use of language within the chosen plat-forms according to its contextual specificities. Is a type of art that talks about/for itself -ontologically speaking? When refer-ring to those particularities we also must take into account the fact that such kind of art doesn't have to be attached to the art scene any longer -its place is everywhere.

! Therefore the artist job is, in this case, to negotiate the way interpretations similar to those distinctive of the act of communication -via image-text- as a form of art can be in-stalled "naturally" in the public sphere, just like any other form of communication that involves text and target public (the public deed) does.

! Of course, before any operation could take place, cer-tain conditions must be meet in order to be able to differenti-ate our approach from those already written. This set of inter-nal rules should address its own conditions -time-space speci-ficities- as said before: just like the conceptual art movement is a reaction to the (art market’s) objectification of the oeuvre and the unspoken restriction to use language –written/spoken word- as if its disembodied medium, therefore, tempo-rarily out of context or even recreating its own (sub)version.

! Now, we have to react to the fact that, virtually, any me-dium might be(come) specific if an appropriate/appropriative translation is performed as (if) liquid methodology, making further interpretations endless. That’s why the artist/writer’s work should be as context-specific as the terms within its content and materialization make it possible, at the time readers/interpretants are provided with enough clues/hints to enable fallen/arisen interpretations (get to) be negotiated freely/fairly rather than reinforced due lack of references.

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2.1

The Signifier asReferent: The References as (if) Signified.

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

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! According to this logic, the traditional sign formula must be recalculated matching an alternative pairing of the funda-mental elements, making possible a comprehensive transfor-mation where Written Art is practiced as (if) the sign of a ges-ture through its document-in-action: The signified –the sym-bolic manifestation- should become its own referent –the object-of-the-real. The signifier –the concept alluded- merges into the cluster of references accumulated through-out the process of context replacement as (if) the reinterpre-tation of the “original” referent:

Signifier - Signified Referent - References \ / <----------> \ / Referent Context

! Summarizing: if the referent does not exist (when is de-liberately abstract), then the signifier can occupy its place automatically as a direct reference to the signified. Else, the form (media/matter subject) in which the signifier manifests itself must be exemplary. On the other hand, If there’s no sig-nifier, then we have a gesture (action). So once these pre-conditions are clear, the new trilogy of the comprehensive (written art) sign can be formulated since the entire process is based on the “abyss effect”. In that case, the artwork func-

tions as signifier and, in turn, the signified gets set by the combination of each associated concept coming from both linguistic and aesthetic terminology, also including in its rep-ertoire the backgrounds/precedents found along the (practice-based) research (the preparatory stage); it is “signi-fied” (in past tense) because is matter of history. Finally, the context becomes the new object-of-the-real, its presentation in a specific space-time (social, economic, and cultural situa-tion) in which the previous transformations can be recogniz-able by the “audience” after analyzing the spectrum of its ma-terial mediations (writing technique, inscription platform, and content), demonstrating how important is the (sign) exemplifi-cation phase for its “reverse engineered” configuration.

Writing ---- Concept Project ------ Research \ / <-document-action-> \ / Translation REplacement

2020

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

! Since there’s no substance inherent to language -the pre-dominance of speech was put into question by (hand)writing, and (type)writing by electronic media, as well- concepts might become matter ones thought in action, meaning the zero degree for an art practice as such, is a signifier without signified. We cannot afford to loose the gesture, when facing the problem of translation through documentation means, artworks breed inside experimen-tal media-labs rather than traditional art-scenarios. After all, we cannot ignore the fact that, if significant, the transference of these contents and methodologies into the standard repertoire art-medium(s) is a process rather inevitable. So, instead of resisting to its systematic absorption, the set of references must be auto-referential and assumed as part of the whole process.

! Like Sci-fi or meta-fiction authors wishing to describe a dis-tant but plausible reality, artist might, as well, intent to recreate documents of their work as not-yet-realized interpretations,

whose appearance as happenings is definitely possible under this conditions -as a matter of media. Such documentation logic/logistics can’t be proposed as 1/1 representation, but as links to download expansion patches where its essence transcends me-dia -along with other conditioning factors. In Addition, approaching art documentation though a combined transmedia theory can also be read as a (self)critique to art-criticism as a form of Art Writing, and Written Art as a form of critical (aesthetic) theory practiced when the artist/writer cannot find the references to support its re-search methodology in institutional contexts, thus, using its own experience as reference: The first case compensates the decon-textualization distinctive of translation processes, turning Written Art’s “re-” gestures into the symbolic matter of media re-presentation. The second is an allergic reaction to art-writing proto-cols, addressing its practice-based research (trial and error), so the sense of the work is confronted directly with itself. This proc-ess usually leads to a type of meta-discourse, where the literature produced tends to resemble more re-creative than theoretical writ-ing as such, a method to overcome the “abyss effect,” where every media/medium from which it gets served has a direct link to the context the work discuss, no matter how unorthodox. The same criteria applies to space-time restricted documentation, the notion of document must cease to exist as a form of representa-tion if transmedia document-action is truly adopted/understood: translation poetics is just a metaphoric concept wishing to be-come an open-writing methodology, not a troubleshooting guide.

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2.2

TransmediaDocumentation as: Gesamkunstwerk.

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

The finest example of how determinism turns into resignation is found in the Arab philosophy; there, the basic principle of Be-ing has no longer (a) sense, and not pleased with it, its pur-pose is reduced to a single word. It doesn’t really matter how you spell it: mektoub, maktoub, maktub, or maktoob, the fact is that “fate is written,” and there’s nothing to do about; “it’s writ-ten,” they insist. Such is the life sentence to which humankind has been condemned; not even last words, such is a privilege the gods have denied to us. Hence, in order to remain true/real humans, Beings, we must realize that under these terms the word of god is no longer good, which means that we must “challenge and change fate... cut-up the words. Make them a new world32” in order to become the kind of artist/person we respect and transform the resignation heritage into the gift re-

signification. Yes, Fate is a euphemism for history, but even if it’s true that “all histories ever possible” have been already writ-ten, it doesn’t mean they have been read as well, it’s literary im-possible. This is our chance to choose in which tense, the sen-tences of our own version of the history of writing, will be rewrit-ten. After all, “poetry and most poets comeback to what is al-ready written33” Just like Brion Gysing did fifty years ago in his series of Mektoub-recordings34, whose experimental methodol-ogy provided us with the source-code used to write the action-script for the Mektoub-Manifesto of Comprehensive Written Art, so it could run smoothly following its basic principles and pa-rameters as identified and explained/exemplified in the follow-ing lines (to make sure the interactions between the different elements be absolutely clear before the same criteria be ap-plied to the final experiments), as an attempt to provide recogni-tion enough tools and trigger as many readings as possible without extensive technical support be required.

Signified as Referent: “It’s Written” is written in a wall.

Content – Writing Technique: to overcome the determinism implied in the term MEKTOUB we must perform a poetic translation and prove that neither fate nor history are absolute concepts, even if already “written.” Therefore a chalk-graffiti is the manifestation of an statement subject to disappear; like a lesson in a school blackboard.

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2.3

Mektoub-Manifesto: Everything (has been)already written.

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

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Content – Location: The word has been written over the pillars supporting a tunnel leading (following the reading) to the Rue du Brabant/Brabantstraat, one of the busiest commercial streets, char-acterized by the predominance of busyness owned and visited by Arabic-descents; a place where fate is either meet or re-written.

Signified as Reference / Documentation - Content: the documen-tation is a video-recording as a clear reference to Gysing’s Mektoub-recordings, and the interpretations of the word (written) and the experi-mental written art that derives from it. The five-word sentence subject to systematic permutation is the alternative translation of the word: everything has been already written. The caption and uttered words is

meant to reinforce the transition from speech to text as the starting point of history. The redundancy is also a mid-dle ground for the recording and the written exercises per-formed separately around permutation writing techniques. After each combination is performed, both audio and video channels gain noise until neither image or sound is recognizable towards the end, yet the sequence is meant to be reproduced in loop, a process inevitable once the meaning gets to be found lost amongst translations. Also a QR linking the video-recording code was installed to (re)create this feedback loop effect.

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

MEKTOUB (It’s Written), Schaerbeek, Brussels, 2013

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32. “Artist of the kind I respect want to be heroes, challenging fate in their lives an in their art. What is fate? Fate is writ-ten: ‘Mektoub’ in the Arab word, where art has always been abstract. ‘Mektoub’ means ‘It is written.’ So... If you want to challenge and change fate... Cut-up the words. Make them make a new world”. See: Allen Hibbard (ed.) Conversations with William Burroughs, (United States: University Press of Mississippi, 1999): 67.

33. Jaques Rancière, Interview with Pablo Bustinduy, The Conversant (Summer 2013), accessed March 10th 2014.

34. In this recordings Gysing introduced an experimental method of automatic-poetry-writing based on the principle of mathematic permutation applied to sets of five word sentences from which compositions reaching up to 400 lines were possible without a single word sequence was repeated. See Mektoub recordings, Brion Gysing, ac-cessed April 15th. QR code posted as a link in-situ to the Mektoub-Manifesto.

Mise en Abyme: Written Art as Context-specific.

3(Introducing THE )Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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! The idea of founding this para-institution in particular finds its motivation amongst the notable variety of "corrupted code" lagging the launch of our program for Comprehensive Written Art. An affair that has proven not to be a one-man-commission (no wonder why it wasn’t done this way be-fore...) Being that so, we found this collaborative attempt of umbrella corporation as a necessary step towards the realiza-tion of our main script: to exploit our will-by-(hand)writing. 

! But before executing any further actions, we must ac-knowledge first that the conditions required to resume our op-erations are quite relative. In fact, despite our initial interests could be described as writing desk art happenings, this could be as well a cultural transaction committee, or even an agency dedicated to aesthetic adultery, and the situation wouldn't be much different to what it is now. Our policies are as unspecific as the interpretation of each term in our name, therefore, we invite you to read them at please, and help us to retrace them since we are not comfortable with (pre)fixed scenarios.

! Most of the meanings attributed to the words Artistic (aes-thetic, bohemian, cultural, expressive, tasteful), Affairs (adultery, business, concern, entanglement, doing, enterprise, episode, event, intrigue, matter, task, transaction), and Bureau (depart-ment, table, agency, committee, ministry, office, secretariat) have been already depicted. It is up to you to choose which

combination suits your (context-specific) needs better. You can be certain that, if significant enough, we will be there to walk you through your path of choice, whatever it takes to help you carry on the adversities of each interpretation.!

! Beware! What you are about so see/read are the early results of our self-commissioned research on the fundamen-tal principles under which writing is able to function as me-dia, and language as (subject) matter. Whereas this is an experimental field, we cannot claim that an art practice as such has achieved its definitive form yet, on the contrary, we can only show you some exemplary alternatives since before our theories become fully operative (as methodol-ogy), an extensive series of  test runs must be executed, preferably if as-signed to an equally expanded array of con-texts, which are still subject to practical recognition, though.

William S. Burro.Written Arts Representative

Brussels, May 16th, 2014.

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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! What is a gesture, but a signified without signifier34, the action before every proper (written) language, hence, its ori-gin and limit? In this/its sense, writing, or more precisely, how we write what we write, is in itself a gesture that cannot be overseen. Its implications are radical, they trace our reading of writing’s scenario as a sign of Being; from what is written to where writing takes place, including all the in-betweens (which are not few. Meaning that it’s understanding is funda-mental in the scope of a comprehensive written art.

! Lets take, for instance, the little aesthetic story behind a sequence of gestural statements in translation: At the be-ginning were the words, and the words were conceptual art, and the art may be constructed/fabricated/built (but not nec-

essarily) by Laurence Weiner, whose sentenced –piece of- reference is simply: “The grace of a gesture,” specifically the one shown at the Palazzo Bembo during the 55th Venice bi-ennale, which, must be said, is a sub-version of its own in-spiration, originally intended-to-be presented at Lisbon in 2010. But that’s an-other/old story.

“The Art world is full of literature (on both, the so-called ur-author and this already-made piece), more or less interest-ing, I do not wish to add any more.35” What really concerns us here is the attitude revealed in the (mentally uttered) sen-tence and its subsequent mediated iterations: the method be-came formula, the typeface a trademark (in this case, prop-erty of The Written Art Foundation -see the irony?) and its con-tent meaning/sense unreachable/undistinguishable. Is such the grace of Weiner’s gesture? If so, it’s necessary to retrace the initial intention and figure out what went wrong along the vaporetti’s ensign journey through the mainstream channels.

3.1Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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The official documents recite as infinitum that in this piece Wiener “uses words as (if) objects36” and in its contemplation “we realize we are dealing with its -three-dimensionality-quality of providing space and encompassing substances,37” creating the illusion of a dialogue, that never took place, and whose line of argumentation is no less hallucinatory, no matter how much we want to believe in it: “The Grace of a Gesture becomes many things while always remaining the same.38”

The consequence is an open door leading to our own definition of this “many things”, an invitation (if not direct provocation) to re-appropriate the gesture and put it at the service of the terms that better please us. Which was exactly what happened next, once we found our own Palazzo with tur-quoise walls in a forgotten pass-though under Rue de la Loi; by doing so, there, we were literally trespassing the law, even more, beyond the reach of its authority...

replacing BY VIRTUEOF INHERENT RECOGNITION

+SENSE GESTURE

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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...If the studio assistants had a state-of-the-art cutting plotter, we had a rusty large-format school printer; if the typeface was already installed in the software, we had a software to trace the typeface; if the text was printed in fine adherent vinyl, we had an x-acto knife with enough blades to retrace the printing and spray paint to reprint the text; If Weiner’s had grace, our gesture had sense; If the original sentence was translated to ten languages and ex-hibited in a Venice Biennale, ours is a permanent interven-tion amid of the European Union headquarters and has been translated into its three-way-speech system; and if his words plough though the Italian sea on a vapporetti, ours are still surfing the data stream of the Word Wide Web in a YouTube video.

reading into BY VIRTUEOF INHERENT volition

+replacement

&

language

public

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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These are/were the terms (media and subject matter) un-der which our re-placed interpretation took place. The rest is matter of recognition, even in a context where the reader/reading is conditioned by the absolute absence of specific ref-erences; once written (our job) is already done.

“Echo, literally, always has the last word 39”

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

34. Giorgio Agamben, Lecture on Gesture, or the struc-ture of Art. European Graduate School, Switzerland, 2011. Accessed April 30th,

35. Dètourment of Huebles’ famous statement, quoted by Craig Dworkin in “The Fate of Echo”, Against Expres-sion: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing (Evanston: Northwester University Press, 2010): xliii. Original ref-erence: Douglas Huebler, “Untitled Statements,” Theo-ries and documents of Contemporary Art, ed. Kristine Stiles and Howard Selz (Berkley: University of Califor-nia Press, 1995): 840.

36. Katy Diamond Hammer, The Grace of A Gesture, Law-rence Weiner, Venice 2013, accessed May 1st 2014.

37. Thomas Kellein, Lawrence Weiner in Venice, Essay for Exhibition Catalog (Venice: Written Art Foundation, 2013)

38. Idem #36.

39. Craig Dworkin, “The Fate of Echo”, Against Expres-sion: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing, (ed.) Craig Dworking & Kenneth Goldsmith (Evanston: North-wester University Press, 2010): xlvii.

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! For the following case-study, AAB representatives went to Bogotá (Colombia) to execute an intervention project. Inspired by the extensive use of (press) printed media in public space advertis-ing (distinctive of this city, especially while on political campaigns season), flooding the streets with a massive amount of messages than soon enough render unrecognizable due its chaotic juxtaposi-tion patterns, we decided to use Tactical Media methodologies to reactivate the spots where most of this non-communication stream circulates, in order to transform them into spaces suited for civic participation and critical exchange. That’s is why the “analytics team” suggested an intermedia (half written printed medium) be designed specifically to broad-cast public’s announcements and ensure the significance of the send-word by providing a platform to overcome the technical and legal inconveniences characteristic of the traditional public-writing methods such graffiti, -which by the

way, is also heavily practiced, displaying its (d)ubiety by tagging systematically the same hosting sites. Being this said, our “(trans)media research department” conceived and developed Monogram, a collective-writing exercise in which about seven hundred copies of a pseudo typographic design became a Type-setting Experimental Station, where any text could be com-posed character-by-character after editing/inking the template of  our paper-based stereotype(face) with simple pen stokes, once posted over the walls designated for speech commerce. Squatting the propagandistic replication headquarters to insert in its serial ports of trifler storage real statements created by the target itself. Nonetheless, composing such hybrid interface was just the beginning, for it to be really operative, first, we needed to structure a (tactical) media plan in which user-resistance, and distribution delay are some of the factors to be taken into ac-count in order to transform the weaknesses of our brand-new (uncategorized) medium into subscripting qualities/abilities.

32

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

Half Written Printed Media.

3.2

!!! We started choosing the sectors with more traffic, hence, where the chances to assist its reiterative imprinting are signifi-cantly increased. Therefore we decided to follow the criteria of the local out-of-home-advertising policies, in which the approved placements tend to be allotted according to its degree of abandon-ment. These allocations are normally situated along the main ave-nues since it is almost impossible to maintain such vast and sometimes conflictive areas. Being that so, the routes chosen where The Carrera Séptima and the Avenida NQS. The first is one of the most culturally, historically and institutionally represen-tative of the city given that most governmental facilities and archi-tectural landmarks are situated. Meanwhile, the latter extends for 40 Km crossing the city from northeast to southwest, being the route that a considerable portion of the population has to under-take on a daily basis, and of course, one of the busiest and (visu-ally) contaminated, even after (and partly because of) several ur-ban expansion plans have been carried on, resulting in its charac-teristics raw-wall surrounding landscape; the ideal scenario for ur-ban mobiliary ornamentation initiatives. Lastly, the settlement stage was completed after identifying a set of tentative shelters where more specific comprehensive art writing experiments could take place in order to explore the possibilities of the recently devel-oped transference system, therefore expanding its field of action and understanding. A couple of these examples where found at the advertising-ready façade of the Central Cemetery of Bogota (currently under a re-signification process through gentrification

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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strategies, including the inauguration of its front street as the more spacious and dubious canvas of Bogota’s emergent street art movement) and the massive gates of a building and a ware-house alongside the NQS, formerly occupied with one of the the administrative offices of the Metropolitan Police Department.

! The second tactical media measure was to devise a com-munication strategy impressive/powerful enough to invite the public to participate of the experiment since Colombians reluc-tancy to get involved in co-laboratory initiatives is well known, mostly due skepticism towards socio-politic transformations

(specially through art) or even fear to the authorities’ retaliation. In this order of ideas, two sets of messages were consigned in the inscription platforms: one dealing with the characteristics of our intermedia in this particular context, and other settled around incomplete statements using the key words of the first, both created by our copywriters in residence as a demonstra-tion to the readership/authorship of how does the editing meth-odology works/functions whit-in the transformation process of apparently disjoined words into coherent statements. This way, a third content tactic (actually the first), a series of blank posters with no intended message, began to make sense.

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

3434

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Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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! The third, and final tactic, is content dispersion/distribution through the assemblage –and subsequent uploading/linking- of a video-essay storing a compilation of half written statements on printed media and their multiple translations (resulting after per-muting the interpretations of every word articulating each sen-tence) rearranged in a sequence of argumentation, whose mon-tage is meant to resemble the time-line of the context in which the project took place, including both the implications of developing/executing an experiment on public type-writing, and the transfor-mation suffered by the contents consigned and its hosting plat-form as chronotope phenomena subject to medium-specific re-strictions, in order to overwrite their respective definition as (if) hap-penings transcending its ephemeral (pre)essence.

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3.3.1 Overloading reality with binary codes: Reading is decoding; 41 writing is programming.

The language of the upper echelons of leadership is always digital...it is nothing than the creation of nothing other than signifiers,42 proving that the essence of writing is inscription itself: to make a record of throught language. Same as the worded-law of god is meant to frag-ment the experience of existence to execute its domain over the so-called Man. Its binary code is the veritable precedent of encipher-ment, so it is no casual thing that computing engineers had decided to redact BASIC commands following up-to-the-letter the rhetorical method of the holly codex, enclosing the subject/machine in its condi-tional LOGIC/CONTROL programming language:  ! IF (read/write) THEN

! (true) ! ELSE ! (false)! END IF.

The scriber has reached age of retirement, writing is no longer will-by-hand but the hand frenetically striking keys, man-aging to overlook how much of a precondition (of all possible pre-conditions) the keyboard has-been/will-be. There’s no such thing as will-by-type(writing) without the previous internalization of its distinctive/discrete layout. The mechanization of writing is, more or less, the apocalyptic realization of conceptual art’s dream of its absolute dematerialization: if “the typewriter made everyone look the same,43” then the code makes everything be the same. Uniformity (the sign of anonymity with no index nor responsible party) is what made possible that “the idea became a machine that makes art44” and the sign of a gesture a matter of media-management. Before ( )code, the material limitations of writing were subject to its condition as printed matter, but now the in-scriptions have been substituted with its (live) display. With the transmutation of the written word into codified numeric values its expressive potential received the ultimate update; the limitations of written language are no longer the limitations of any given me-dia or its data stream rate. That’s possessing, converting into any possible medium.45” Launch your text-editor, and see what you can do with all the extensions when treated as .txt files!46

3.3Artistic Affairs Bureau.

()CODE

The Medium to end all media.40

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3.3.2 A word-processing feedback loop: Self-replicating media and displays off-power.47

The exponential growth of new media technologies has an-other drawback: what to do with the outdated (not-yet-obsolete but technically-challenged) devises? “Give it a-way”, some would say. “Create a media archeology laboratory,” oth-ers have. But since it’s already here, waiting for us to do some-thing in its place, the right call seems to be reassigning its mis-sion: data is an ephemeral referent but metadata is the con-text, and “context is the new content 48”

I. The institutional tagged lines are deconstructed 49

(cracking the code) according to their composition/design and syntactic values:

Font-based fragmentation of the rather ambiguous intended message as an experiment on concrete poetry and its reception, reinforced by the visual compound: 50 the anatomy of a copy is revealed in its printed copies.

According to this approach, the caption analyzed, shows the following subcategorized statements:

- You want to be? It’s not gonna be easy - ARTIST, DESIGNER, FILMMAKER. YOU GOT THE GUTS.- AN A, A BUT ‘VE THE FOR IT.!

Billboard as found at the entrance of LUCA School of ART, Brussels.

II. A derived statement is configured fixing the bugs (corrupted lines of programming) and written in a code compatible (readable) by its reassigned operative system:

The HiperText-Markup-Language as “universal code” and tool to overcome the restraints of the new (designated) me-dia, supported by its object-class-notation (grammato-logic) to make the structure of the single typeface mes-sage, rolling through the Light-Emitting-Diode screen, rec-ognizable for other code-writers/reading-programmers.

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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I<!DOCTYPE html><head>        <meta charset="UTF-8">        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge,chrome=1">        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">        <title> ( )CODE </title>        <style>                p {                        text-align: center                }                .zl_dos {                        color: #000000;                        font-family: zl-dos, terminal, monospace;                        font-size: 65px;                }                .century_schoolbook {                        color: #000000;                        font-family: "Century Schoolbook", serif;                        font-size: 52px;                }                .maple_bold {                        color: #000000;                        font-family: "Maple Bold", sans-serif;                        font-size: 38px;                        text-transform: uppercase;                }                .helvetica_neue {                        font-family: "Helvetica Neue", serif;                        font-size: 50px;                }                .green {                        color: #8bc53f;                        text-transform: uppercase;                }                .blue {                        color: #2b388f;                        text-transform: uppercase;                }        </style></head><body>        <p>

<span class="zl_dos">If </span>                <span class="century_schoolbook">you want to be </span>                <span class="maple_bold">an </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue green">artist,</span><br/>                <span class="maple_bold">a </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue green">(&nbsp;&nbsp;)signer</span>                <span class="maple_bold">, a </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue green">(&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;)maker </span><br/>                <span class="zl_dos">{</span>                <span class="century_schoolbook"> It's not gonna be easy; </span>                <span class="zl_dos"> }</span><br/>                <span class="zl_dos">else </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue blue">you </span>                <span class="maple_bold">'ve </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue blue">got </span>                <span class="maple_bold">the </span>                <span class="helvetica_neue blue">code </span>                <span class="maple_bold">for it.</span>        </p></body>

</html>

III. The sub-codified statement are displayed through a bi-nary output (on split screen mode):

a) Website-specific intervention: looping banner hosted in the Transmedia Internet page.

b) Multi-platform storing: reel of all previous phases in a comprehensive (transmedia) document-action, or (re-contextualized) self-referential statement. Media writ-ing is rewriting media (itself).

Artistic Affairs Bureau.

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Artistic Affairs Bureau.

40. The CPU is what made processing possible, hence “The medium to end all media”. See: Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 1999)

41. Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing: managing language in the digital age (NY: Columbia University Press, 2011): 19

42. Lacan, quoted by Friedrich Kittler in Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 249

43. Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stan-ford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 199

44. Sol LeWitt, quoted by Craig Dworking, Against Expres-sion: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing, (ed.) Craig Dworking & Kenneth Goldsmith (Evanston: North-wester University Press, 2010): xxxiv

45. Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stan-ford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 244

46. Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing: managing language in the digital age (NY: Columbia University Press, 2011): 23

47. See: Ka Man Hun, Improving the social impact of a public displayi in Schaarbeek, Master Thesis KU Leuven, (Belgium: 2012-3)

48. Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing: managing language in the digital age (NY: Columbia University Press, 2011): 3

49. Deconstruction is the theory of signification that questions the whole fundament of the composite trilogy of the sign, the annoying heritage of metaphysics that without question, or as Derrida himself said: “From the moment that there is meaning, there are nothing but signs. We think only in signs.” See: Jaques Derrida, Of Grammatology, (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997)

50. Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stan-ford: Stanford University Press, 1999): 228

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