A text written by Myrto Digoni for the first Kryographia
catalogue
To cast a word
A word is thrown. It colonizes the page. It is formed to
a specific shape, is trimmed, stretched, conjugated, elided to create a
recognizable / readable signifier. A shadow is cast. Then, metaphorically, it exits
the page. Another word is thrown, and another, infusing the paper with scents
and snatches of reality. The mold may be the same, but the meaning –and
this is especially true if the word is a concept– is elastic. The concept
evolves, merges various components, which may be variations, each variation
making its presence felt as a bold stroke. There is an undeniable plastic
quality to it. Also a distinctive spatiality. One needs to find his bearings in
a word. One has to navigate within it. The word entails movement; it also
claims movement. Mixing words, casting words is brain gymnastics. Which, one
should acquiesce, can be a dangerous exercise. It propels us into the poetic
anarchy of the sensible world.
One way to probe and reassess the world is to play word
games. Creating metaphors. Or playing the same games Lewis Carroll used to
play: making word ladders or inventing portmanteaux.
In the first instance a player is given a start word and an end word and has to
progressively morph the start word into the end word, using at each step of the
way an existing word. To do so he can add, remove, change a letter, or use the
same letters anagrammatically. By doing so one can stumble on his unconscious
and learn more about how he thinks and feels; for one is essentially working by
intuitive leaps and linkages. In the second instance the player / writer blends
various words and their meaning into a new word. The coinage expresses a
singular choice, reflects one’s unique way of experiencing and rendering a
situation.
It also reveals the associative and metaphorical movement of thinking. In his novel Ulysses,
James Joyce associates what he calls his ‘8 am scene’ The House
with the color orange and kidneys, the 11 am scene The Graveyard with black and white and the heart, the
noon scene The Newspaper
with red and the lungs, etc[1].
In Joyce’s case the mind is beyond a doubt metaphorical; his metaphorical
thinking is grounded in embodiment, on man’s bodily experience of the world. He
uses a synesthetic approach, in which stimulation of one sensory / cognitive pathway
leads to experiences in a second sensory / cognitive pathway. As synesthetes go, letters put together do not solely equate
a word that resonates with a single meaning; they also equate colors or evoke
odors.
But sometimes, when the word actually exits the page, literally being cast
or molded into a work of art, it denies the metaphor. Conceptual artists create
neon sculptures of words that are thought out as tautologies. They transform
words into visual objects –actually they remind us that words are
primarily shapes and forms, before even being signifiers. Joseph Kosuth’s
artwork Five Words In Orange Neon (1965) is effectively composed of five words in
orange neon. What you see is what you see. But is it? The temptation is strong
to see beyond, see an allusion to color-graphemic synesthesia, look for
personal resonances. The form forming and jointing capabilities of the human
brain are endless. We always tend to create connections, search for lost
correspondences. There seems to be no escape. Ultimately to cast a word means
‘to search for a lost scent as in hunting with hounds’[2].
[1] Around 1920 James
Joyce drew the Linati Schema to help a friend (Carlo Linati) understand the
fundamental structure of his novel Ulysses, ‘an epic of two races and at the same time the cycle of the human
body’. In this schema different episodes are associated with different parts of
the human body, mythological heroes and colors.
[2] This being one of the
definitions of the verb ‘to cast’