Death by text is a side specific mural, consisting of three parts. It relates to the University as a institutionalised machine, reproducing a text based culture by 'education' and opening ways for the (persons) results into society.
The Chamber -
situated in the gallery space. The mural is based on answers I got from
some members of teaching stuff cross departments of the university to
the question: Why is text black?
The Chamber is like the hortus conclusus, a factory, a Wunderkammer or
the magic cabinet of letters and text - where the text itself meets and
communicates with itself. (In the age of internet, the gallery might be
the server of the project, with an intelligent Web 2.0 machine.)
According to the optical rules of black silhouettes overlapping each other,
the text is gone black itself out partly. So it is to become a form, whose
visual appearance exceeds the semantic readability. Black / white, the
binary code, black becomes the disappearance of one format of meaning
and the appearance of another one.
Contemplating text as dominating format of our culture, it demands to
go 'beyond' the text as surface, diving through the text. The text becomes
a physicality, the body of text is forming into a body of o the total
black which will appear, if all the pages of one book are to be printed
on one sheet. Diving through this blackness is an option and re-surfacing
beyond the text, within an extended meaning.
If the gallery space is the 'magic' centre of text, the two external positions are relating to the University as text - based institution and its functions taken up in a metaphorical level.
The Mill are
the walls under the Octogon, and each of the walls depicts a different
form of gate, door or entry, mirrored on the same wall, that you could
symbolically step through the door, or you are still in front of it if
you are through.
The mill of doors, which is a general metaphor - not only related to text
as a door into the meaning, but of course also related to all the doors
- real ones, carrier doors - opened by text and an institution like a
University.
Casino Agora
This piece relates to the public space, where people meet and talk and
who raises the voice there. Death by Text signs sitting an old fashioned
Las Vegas - style on pavilions, leading into the depth of the black -
space, with a city in distance.
