Statement for The Ambiguity of the Social Hysterical Revelation

It was one of those dream-like moments, those hysterical moments, when I had this idea that somehow, someway I could get down underneath and find my true self.  Now of course I question this idea of a true self, or whether there is a self at all.  But assuming there is, whatever its definition, I pondered what might be in the way.  I concluded all these artifacts produced, piled up and around us was the issue and our language production just a particular (and of course primary) form of this artifact making. 

           I chose language as my focus, to get under the symbol and move to the physical artifactness of language.  I was going to go behind the signifier, unhook from these cultural restraints, and find me!

           I dove into text as if a monk transcribing in a monastery.  I panned in and in until I felt I needed to dephoneticize the phoneme itself.  The phoneme’s physicality would come to the fore and become primarily an object, unattached from phonetic determination; the freed object to be manipulated to its own system.  It would be an artifact cut loose from the social milieu and embraced as part of Place. 

            So I drew.  I rendered some topographically and some in charcoal smears.  I pressed into the paper with a burnisher, engraving the surface, or swirled fine graphite lines in a delirium.  I ripped and tore, flipped and reversed, yanking these insistent signs from their Cartesian field.  I stripped this thing of its social context, made it mine, and piled on my own meaning, layer on layer until it was absurd.  I figured at that point of absurdity, I would lose my context and be Place.

            And what I found was the deeper demand for more artifacts, more words, more explanations.  Some would say I did not go far enough, that I was not serious enough.  That may be true.  What ever the case, what I found was the need for Others to give me a definition, something out there filling me with a barrage of artifacts and articulating mine.  I now look to them for the revelation of my narrative through my drawings.    

            So I created more artifacts and I present them to you, an unknown public, for review.  I do not name the pieces.  I fix Velcro dots on the wall by each piece with cards on a table reading “Meaning Group ?” or “Meaning Group æ” as to avoid a hierarchical sense to the groups.  You can place these cards, or move them, as you see fit, grouping drawings based on whatever pleases you.  If you want to compare any drawings, you can use an available web-site to see disparate elements side-by-side, as if comparing hotel rooms or historical events.

            I need you to write your choices on a provided card, noting groupings and date and time determined, and place this in a box.  I then can take all these desires of meaning, look at them statistically and post this narrative after the show. 

           I know that some of you will relate common elements running through the pieces.  Some of you will find nothing for yourselves.  Some will get into the game of the rebus-of-the-unconscious that unfolds.  And I know, with all this done, what will be left is the physical object with all this human input laying around.  No matter your position, you determine my self, my me, my (k)not.