| Title or content of the project: Words Are Not Hard |
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Artist(s) / Organization(s): Eugenia Raskopoulos
Media(s): Installation
Date: 2008-4-23
Venue(s): Da Ning International Square |
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Description:
Words are Not Hard 2006-viedo installation comprising of video 4'16 and 7*4*3 meter room built of besser brick, wood and fabric.
Words are not hard, as they wend and wash their way through our mouths and into the spaces between. The river which runs through language. The river which runs from its source to its sea and around again. Words are not transparent: as Balzac noted, there are 'mysteries buried in every human word'.
Yet, here, the mysteries of verbal and linguistic exchanges are played out through these apparently transparent words forming between these interlocutors. Into a small brick house we go- a house within a house, perhaps a tomb, perhaps an outhouse – to see a flow of words: mouth to mouth, female to male, male to female, one language to another, back and forth, round and around. Words However translucent, each word holds the mysteries of its language, if not also those of its speakers.
Words are not hard, and therein lies their difficulty. As Gaston Bachelard put it: “liquidity is…the very desire of language. Language needs to flow. It flows naturally.” Yet, if flow is what language desires and what is desired of language , words sometimes run against rocks, on their way to the hard places of meaning.
At times, a great force is required to make meaning flow. So, while words are not hard, understanding can be as hard as a blast from a water cannon. Hearts and ears may be hardened, damming any flow. Words are not hard, but communication too often is. |
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