DisAppearing World | Försvinnande Värld
Day One: Writing on Water
Svandammen Pond
Uppsala, Sweden
September 2018
The Magazine
Below are the individual pages from a magazine that was placed on the fourteen benches alongside the Svandemman Pond during the Uppsala installation; this magazine was intended as an historical, conceptual, and personal supplement to the project. Tied by a thin wire to each of the benches, all of the magazines were in ziplock bags with a stone placed on top of each of them upon which was written: "Open | Observe | Return."
By the second day of the installation, all fourteen copies of the magazine had disappeared.
By the second day of the installation, all fourteen copies of the magazine had disappeared.
Day Two: The Parks Crew and Reports of "Debris"
The Inadvertent De-Installation, and the Disappearing of the Disappearing World
The Inadvertent De-Installation, and the Disappearing of the Disappearing World
On the second morning of the installation, someone in the community called in to the Uppsala Parks Department,
reporting "debris" floating on the pond. The crew (above) quickly responded, hastily removing the writing on water installation (at which time, apparently, the "debris" went unrecognized as letters and words). Not long after, however, the mistake was realized, the official police permit located, and apologies were given. I arrived soon after
(but too late) at the scene of the disappearance.
reporting "debris" floating on the pond. The crew (above) quickly responded, hastily removing the writing on water installation (at which time, apparently, the "debris" went unrecognized as letters and words). Not long after, however, the mistake was realized, the official police permit located, and apologies were given. I arrived soon after
(but too late) at the scene of the disappearance.
Day Three: The Interview
Swedish National Television. "The Park Unit Cleans Up the Artwork"
Video and interview by Niklas Gedda, of SVT: Nyheter
Broadcast September 19, 2018.
www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/har-stadar-parkenheten-bort-konstverke
Swedish National Television. "The Park Unit Cleans Up the Artwork"
Video and interview by Niklas Gedda, of SVT: Nyheter
Broadcast September 19, 2018.
www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/har-stadar-parkenheten-bort-konstverke
Swedish National Radio, "The Artwork Was Erased — By Mistake."
Broadcast on Wednesday, September 19, 2018
sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=114&artikel=7046939
Broadcast on Wednesday, September 19, 2018
sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=114&artikel=7046939
Day Four: The Newspaper
Aftonbladet (Stockholm Daily Newspaper), "The Municipality Cleaned Up the Artwork— Thought it was Rubbish,"
Published September 22, 2018
Aftonbladet (Stockholm Daily Newspaper), "The Municipality Cleaned Up the Artwork— Thought it was Rubbish,"
Published September 22, 2018
An Introduction to Lecture Presentations at Uppsala University (Sept. 18) and Stockholm University (Sept. 21)
Surface Tension | Writing on Water and the Naming of Waves
“Words, we know, have the power to make things disappear, to make them appear as things that have vanished. This appearance is only that of disappearance; this presence too returns to absence through the movement of wear and erosion which is the soul and the life of words, which draws light from their dimming, clarity from their dark.”
—Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature
“Words, we know, have the power to make things disappear, to make them appear as things that have vanished. This appearance is only that of disappearance; this presence too returns to absence through the movement of wear and erosion which is the soul and the life of words, which draws light from their dimming, clarity from their dark.”
—Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature
To think is one thing, thoughts racing about the brain, scattershot, evanescent, never landing anywhere long enough before dissolving, re-solving, and dissolving again, into another fluid thought, another thought-ful and floating formation. But to write is, or should be (or so it’s said), something else, something more settled or settling; for to write is to write upon--not, per se, upon a particular topic, but upon a particular surface—placing letters and words onto something—some-thing—some material, some substance, where the marks made are to stay in place, secured until we return to them, and they return to us.
The staying power of such surfaces is, however, often taken largely for granted by writers, by readers, and are simply assumed to be sturdy enough to sustain the language written upon them, preserving and protecting thoughts shaped onto page, ideas steadied into sentences. With our ink absorbing onto paper, our typed-out letters “saved” upon the computer, we write with the assurance of endurance, with the conviction that when we come back to the page, or awaken our sleeping screens, the words will still be there, as if awaiting our own awakened eyes, as if still living, unchanged, in their visible, readable inscription. But what if, returned to, they weren’t? What if those written lines of language had—like a mirage on the horizon—vanished, the words disappeared, the page abruptly blank, the screen suddenly empty? What then?
Printing words onto paper, though not as solid as those once confidently carved into stone, nonetheless promises a durability that can still easily be mistaken for the nearly eternal, at least the long-lasting, outlasting us, offering the illusion of permanence, a denial (or deference) of time’s toll, a brief reprieve from the ephemeral, the fragile nature of language, the fleeting nature of thinking. But, if thought about, we know that such written promises of persistence are rarely kept, or are never kept, or are only kept for so long, until finally time’s intervention makes its presence felt, or makes its absence immanent, revealing or exposing what Blanchot describes as “the movement of wear and erosion which is the soul and the life of words.”
And it is, in fact, that “soul and life” of words that I want to address in regard to my own “writing on water” installations, and to the vulnerability of language that is uncovered by this “wear and erosion”—where a word is a thing, a thing made of material, material in time, in space, and, as such, from which, as the poet William Carlos Williams insisted, there should be, must be, “No ideas but in things,” in such things, where and within, after all, so much depends.
When writing on water, promises of a word’s permanence cannot really be believably made, with few illusions of language’s endurance entertained, at least not for long. For the unstable surfaces of these liquid substances—a pond, a pool, a river, a stream (unlike paper, stone, or screen)—are such that a word either floats or sinks, temporarily, tenuously placed at the mercy of its unsettled setting, that ephemeral site of the writing, offering, as it does, if examined closely, an appearance of disappearance; the words, shimmering on the water’s surface, as a thing that has, or will, vanish. For the very material used for such writing is inevitably subject to the movement of its own transformations, to the specific elements of the specific setting that, once put in place—out in the open, among the corrosive elements—begin immediately wearing away at the language used, the substance supporting it.
It is, in part, for this very reason that writing on water offers an instructional demonstration of language’s entropic essence (and of ours), its deterioration and decay (which we share), a necessary lesson about language and thought, and about longing and loss, where letters and words vulnerably exposed—floating formless, floating formlessly away—“draw light,” as Blanchot so movingly describes, “from their dimming, clarity from their dark.”
The staying power of such surfaces is, however, often taken largely for granted by writers, by readers, and are simply assumed to be sturdy enough to sustain the language written upon them, preserving and protecting thoughts shaped onto page, ideas steadied into sentences. With our ink absorbing onto paper, our typed-out letters “saved” upon the computer, we write with the assurance of endurance, with the conviction that when we come back to the page, or awaken our sleeping screens, the words will still be there, as if awaiting our own awakened eyes, as if still living, unchanged, in their visible, readable inscription. But what if, returned to, they weren’t? What if those written lines of language had—like a mirage on the horizon—vanished, the words disappeared, the page abruptly blank, the screen suddenly empty? What then?
Printing words onto paper, though not as solid as those once confidently carved into stone, nonetheless promises a durability that can still easily be mistaken for the nearly eternal, at least the long-lasting, outlasting us, offering the illusion of permanence, a denial (or deference) of time’s toll, a brief reprieve from the ephemeral, the fragile nature of language, the fleeting nature of thinking. But, if thought about, we know that such written promises of persistence are rarely kept, or are never kept, or are only kept for so long, until finally time’s intervention makes its presence felt, or makes its absence immanent, revealing or exposing what Blanchot describes as “the movement of wear and erosion which is the soul and the life of words.”
And it is, in fact, that “soul and life” of words that I want to address in regard to my own “writing on water” installations, and to the vulnerability of language that is uncovered by this “wear and erosion”—where a word is a thing, a thing made of material, material in time, in space, and, as such, from which, as the poet William Carlos Williams insisted, there should be, must be, “No ideas but in things,” in such things, where and within, after all, so much depends.
When writing on water, promises of a word’s permanence cannot really be believably made, with few illusions of language’s endurance entertained, at least not for long. For the unstable surfaces of these liquid substances—a pond, a pool, a river, a stream (unlike paper, stone, or screen)—are such that a word either floats or sinks, temporarily, tenuously placed at the mercy of its unsettled setting, that ephemeral site of the writing, offering, as it does, if examined closely, an appearance of disappearance; the words, shimmering on the water’s surface, as a thing that has, or will, vanish. For the very material used for such writing is inevitably subject to the movement of its own transformations, to the specific elements of the specific setting that, once put in place—out in the open, among the corrosive elements—begin immediately wearing away at the language used, the substance supporting it.
It is, in part, for this very reason that writing on water offers an instructional demonstration of language’s entropic essence (and of ours), its deterioration and decay (which we share), a necessary lesson about language and thought, and about longing and loss, where letters and words vulnerably exposed—floating formless, floating formlessly away—“draw light,” as Blanchot so movingly describes, “from their dimming, clarity from their dark.”
Many thanks to Ayla Lunberry and Serhan Wade for their enormous help with the installation (and Ayla for many of the photographs); Otto Fischer and Mats Rosengren of Uppsala University for the invitation; Erik Falk for the paddle board; and Emmanuel Cruz for assistance with the magazine...
Copyright © 2018 Clark Lunberry. All rights reserved.