Sunday, August 7, 2016

Matt Keegan, Kay Rosen at Grazer Kunstverein

Matt Keegan, Kay Rosen at Grazer Kunstverein
(link)

Language at architectural scales, symbolizing words' own arrangement of the floorplan of your thoughts. The infectious insertion of a stranger's speech into yours: when I write "lake" the word appears in you, my voice for yours. Reading is like relinquishing control of thought to an author's temporary marionetting of yours. How odd that my words are a voice in your head. Reading is such an automatic mechanism. It is a base human disposition to "read" our environment, to make sense of our surroundings, and advertising takes advantage of this: a byline appears and before you can stop yourself you have read it, allowed it briefly to control you and its message has been passed, its transaction has been complete, and its sign depleted lifeless garbage. Artists soften this verbose assault by clipping meaning, leaving it to never complete a logic but hover incomplete and