Mail Art Cards [part 7]
10.06.2009
This is the seventh in a series of nine entries on the Mail Art Card Project. See the 1st, 2nd, 3th, 4th, 5th, and 6th entries.
masking absence
Masking the absence of a basic reality is the third phase of the simulated image. Using the woodblock print as a master, I redrew the letter forms as outlines. In doing so I was producing a piece that could appear as a singular work, independent of its chronology. The woodblock implies both a previous image (the image the block is made to be the reflection of) and a successive image (the image the block is capable of producing). The print presents an alternate representation as the end of a process geared toward its creation (creating a form, carving a block, then printing the block) and thus the true intended reality. Everything prior to it appears incomplete in comparison.
It occurred to me as I began the drawing that no one would actually be receiving a reflection of a basic reality. I had intended the woodblock to fulfill that role, but since I had made the woodblock by first composing the words in Illustrator, flipping them, printing them out and then using them as a template to carve into the wood, the first card would actually be the mask of the absence of a basic reality.
But that wasn’t right either: I composed the text after reading the words in a book that had been printed by a publishing company that had used a translator to convert into English the German manuscript written by Baudrillard who—before ever putting pen to paper—formed concepts, words, and this statement in his mind.
And these formulated concepts and words, they came from where? I could keep going back and back and back in the chain of causation and influence, but that would mean that either there existed an infinite chain or there was a source that sprang from nothing. Either way, the promise of reality was illusory.
The drawn letter forms.
Read the previous post in the series.
[11:17 am]