Red Vertical, words in space

Last month when I was in Paris I went to see “Verticale Rouge, Paroles en l’air”(which you can translate Red vertical, idle words. Note that “paroles en l’air” means idle words or empty promises, “en l’air” also means in other context “up in the air”), the work of Brigitte Brandeau in a group exhibit at La Madeleine.

In this work Brigitte is exploring how text disappears behind its shadows. The text (made of copper) is hanging in the air, a floating panel, projected on a white background. One can’t read the copper words; in fact they don’t even really look like words but the projected shadow does look like, “is” text. It reminded me of these old handwritten letters, with a fading ink. Brigitte told me how she was aiming to explore the ephemeral nature of the text which does not “really” exist, while its shadows seems more “real”. I won’t get into a discussion about the notion of reality (it’ll take us too far, and this has been an on-going discussion for centuries) but I was really intrigued by this approach as in my work with Anca Metiu on writing and correspondences, we’ve been looking at writing as a trace and as an objectifying process. Brigitte’s notion of text (close for me to the work of Blanchot) also reminded me some previous posts on literary texts as creating a space for the reader. (Once again we could have a very long discussion on the notion of text, esp. literary text, but it will take us far away from the issues – already broad – discussed in this blog).

It also made a lot of sense for our work with Aileen as while by projecting text on semi-transparent panels we were aiming to create a “physical” space for people to walk through, Brigitte by projecting a “physical” text made of copper made it disappear in front of its shadow. Yet in both cases, we all worked with materials. Brigitte told me about the tenuous work of writing the text with copper and it reminded me of our work with the wires, fabrics, projectors and ladders…
If you’re in Paris, stop by. Verticale Rouge is at the end of the Church, on the right.