Aki Sasamoto: A Dream Language

Aki Sasamoto, Judge Mentals 7.18.18, performance documentation at White Rainbow, London, 2018; Copyright Aki Sasamoto, courtesy of White Rainbow, London and Take Ninagawa, Tokyo, Photo by: Damian Griffiths

It is precisely because the unsaid always remains in the background of what is said, and the not understood always remains in the background of what is understood, that the yearning peculiar to linguisticality will always be unfulfilled.

– Donatella Di Cesare, Utopia of Understanding [i]

 

Consciousness is – or might be­ – a thing in formation. Or, at least, not a solid. The Greeks considered thought to be gaseous, something like a cloud. During the Enlightenment, it was a thin, heatless flame that shot along ventricles throughout our bodies. All the while, the Buddhist conception of consciousness was as an unceasing stream, a restless current, sometimes muddied and crowded, with its own tributaries and eddies.

David Lamelas: Publication

David Lamelas’s September 1970 exhibition at London gallery Nigel Greenwood Inc Ltd consisted of a table with a 48-page book on it. The eponymous Publication, just reprinted by not-for-profit publishers Primary Information, consists of 13 written responses to the statements: ‘1) Use of oral and written language as an Artform; 2) Language can be considered as an Artform; 3) Language cannot be considered as an Artform.’ Most the replies are on the same bland register. ‘I think artists will be using language to make their art for a long time,’ Robert Barry states flatly. Yep.