This week at college - happenstance and lecture

Intrigued by the blank pages in Elica's book of "love poems", which she has blanked out and is re-writing, I couldn't help noticing similar configurations in a magazine (I-D, perhaps?) in the library -

Back in the basement studio -

During discussion of projects, my "tube book" got stretched out to its full length ... no wonder it took so long to put together! And to think it folds up into a (large) matchbox.

This week's lecturer, Caroline Bergvall, has a multilingual practice and uses text as an installation piece - this is part of Middling English, Language - Space - Sound (also described here) -

She quoted Robert Smithson as saying language is built, not written, and also mentioned Gordon Matta Clark's Conical Intersect (he's in the current show at the Barbican Gallery). There was much of interest in her talk - can it be summed up in a few phrases? - multiple languages (of origin); multiple spaces of inscription; body representation - and its signals; exploration of ephemerality; the audience's assumption of (the author's) presence; operating across literary knowledge; crossing, traversing, translating borders; shibboleths; ideological concerns in etymology; the physicality of handwriting; ballads reclaiming a forgotten pool of culture; text in space - a trajectory, a metaphor ... no, it can't be summed up in a few phrases...