An Orchestra of Forces
On the surface of the earth, in a midsize European metropolis, stands a red-brick industrial building – an artist’s studio. Its concrete foundations hold ercely on to the planet, just as the planet holds fiercely on to the studio. Inside, on the ground floor, a stone table supports the weight of a sheet of paper; it feels the weight where the rough-hewn surface makes contact with the page.
The stone has been around for hundreds of years. The paper, much younger, enjoys the cold, solid support, aware that the oor and foundations beneath the table were built upon the very same earth from which the paper, as a sapling, once grew. The paper is mindful of its scarcity as a resource. It is about to engage with a pencil. The pencil gets together with its companion, the hand. It is a listening hand, in uid motion. The movements conjure a hand dance of pushing and being pushed. Sometimes the pencil leads, sometimes the hand. There’s some friction in the interaction.
The weight of the hand and of the pencil travels to the paper, onwards to the table, and further down to the foundations of the building and to the planet. The pencil is conscious of its ability to push the planet.
As the pencil pushes, the planet pushes back. The table readily hosts the downward and upward forces, negotiating. The meeting-up of trajectories gives rise to the drawing. As much as the relationship is vertical at rst glance, there are also sideways connections, and spinning and orbital activity. The drawing is drawing upon and travelling in various dimensions. At this moment, the pencil is catching up with an idea that has come from the future, but has not yet been scribbled down. Time is its companion. The listening hand enjoys the apparently abstract agenda of the pencil; it accepts the unspeakable openness of things. It is too soon, at this point in time, to introduce a subject.
Contribution to Hyperobjects for Artists - a reader, edited by Timothy Morton and Laura Copelin with Peyton Gardner
