The gesture solidified
makes type.
The figure of type, reduced to mark,
is an alphabet.
An alphabet, trailed through
word,
is a mouthed gesture
tracking the dissolving
type
as it returns to gesture.
It’s meant to be fake, of course its fakery
that’s why it works.
Cover-up star cover star
up star stared upon
the starry deceit seen not
covered deceit star and seen deception star…
Our eyes are twinkling.
The falsity star misstatement; oh that was just an accident, a slip,and
it really meant
nothing
at all.
Star perjury brings fine rewards.
Star witness, nice hotel,
maybe just four star really.
Prevarication stars.
All tales told
tall tales
deep tales
long tales make for the star turn
conjuring and surgery, masks and masks, spells and fixes to control a creature whose control is largely given, already within the remit, a creature of combustion, of chemicals and mechanics, flow and rigidity, exhaustion and centre, gravity negotiated… Gravity negotiated in most instances…
But socially it seems this creature is wild. These social rules are all its own, only this creature makes the rules, and yet so often it is only this creature which refuses to abide by the rules. Here this creature becomes strange.
Body.
It becomes a body, as if by magic, and this is why it works.
And this is why it is wild.
The put upon and torn at and pushed around body
and in the fierce locality of utterance, of will, of dispel and ego, of the great swelling, world conquering, the swift surety of knife, and deep booming resound of a transaction
this how it works
noisy, unanswerable, beauty imperious,
an underground empire of need
needs body
whose needs are slavery resting upon a lie of reward.
Do not rehearse the future. Reverse from day dream and rest in this moment.
Turning and change lead nowhere; stopping we progress.
One day your just doing will not do.
Lament not you eyebrow’s broken symmetry.
Comply
A submission, adherence to laws, influences and suggestions. Acceptance taken to the level of a perversion; when obedience is this exact it overwhelms the law giver, leaving them lacking in speech and so in awe of the servile entity that their existence becomes untenable without that which complies.
Estate map
The map of the estate is an eulogy for Utopia (which retreats with each brick laid down and yet might nonetheless exist, beyond the design, in some lived proportion not yet detailed and never quite imagined). The map of the estate is an epitaph (that architects and planners will habitually erect before some others’ tombstone while never once suspecting how they designed it for themselves). The map of the estate is an epiphany of symbols and silence in the long _ alarmed _ night.
Sorry, copyright restrictions prevent us from showing this artwork here
Artist
In ven to ry (founded 1996)
Title
Estate Map
DaSte19u99mmInventory is a group of artists, writers and thinkers formed in 1995 as a
coMleledicumtiAvcreyliwc paoinrtkanidnmgarikneripnenteonradluimsicniiupmlinary spaces. These
include published text, pDeimrfeonsriomnssaupnpcoret: 1in835pxu12b2l5imcmspfraamcee:
1s9,33flxy1-3p25oxs9t0emrms pasted on the streets, an on-
Coglloecitinong research initiative called Inventory Survey Project and finished art-
Tate
works in sculpture, photography, collage, photocopy, graffiti, video documen-
tary, soAcuqunisditioanPnudrchpasierda20t0e2 radio. Since 1995 they have published an experi-
Reference
Tm078e3n9 Otnadlisjpolauy artnTaatel,BIrintavinentory, in which cSoomrrym,
ceonptyarrigyhotnrepstorpicutiloanrscpurletvuernet, umsefdroimta-shoSwihngatrheis
atrhtwisorkahretrwe
tionsExhoibnitiounr: RbuainnLulstife and arcane literary and philosophical issues jostle with di-
verse texts found on the streets and an ongoing glossary of ‘phenomena’. In- ventory operates from
a global standpoint expressing goals and at-
titudes ary
Would you believe it
There once was a machine designed to finally eradicate all the folly of government, all injustice and mis-rule. Rendering utterly fallibility from power, at last, in order to render up an infallible power.
Completely democratic, any person of any rank, age, gender, mobility, race or creed could – at any hour or day – approach this machine and ask of it a question. There were no limits upon the type or quantity of question… Without delay, without quibble or query, an unequivocal reply would be returned.
There could be allowed for absolutely no doubt as to the stainless authority of these answers. Not the most pitiless unbeliever would sincerely allow that, at day end, their faith did not lie with the towering truths this machine supplied. It was as if law. Simply the machine’s size acted as proof enough. Yet, if a lone wrinkle borne of suspicion were to persist in even the hardest mahogany of cynicism, this too would be ironed out when next one contemplated the moneyed splendour of its pure silver tubing. A demand for respect, submission, could then gladly be complied with as one’s inspection of this machine continued and its vast bulk of platinum plated plumbing, its fascinating nervous system of jewelled valves, gates, gold switches and crystal filters were revealed. The utter indubability of its existence!
Would you believe it; the day of justice approached, a day of universal ceremony, world wide celebration. Police would become redundant, armies and governments would happily dissolve themselves. The months of anticipation had in themselves been a joyous party.
The day came; henceforth all would have wealth and some would have work if they wished it. This day freedom would come to all. They were about to switch on utopia.
A hushed moment; but when they threw the switch, a cut diamond rod, the machine gutted itself in a splendid pyrotechnic seppuku.
Some say that on this day many people could not mourn. In fact, strange to report, at sight of the machine’s death throes many experienced an intense satisfaction.
Original first published in Inventory: losing, finding, collecting. Vol.2 No.3 1997.
Technique
“We are talking about ‘technique’, a word that in itself suggests a way of ‘cutting’ a Gordian Knot, because technique, conscious thought, and unconscious thought are all ways of thinking that are mistaken for thought itself.” [Rene Magritte.]
Homage
No – it is more like frottage.
Squeamishness
To live fast, die young, and (imagine one will) leave a beautiful corpse.
Double entendre
It is a blunt instrument.
Purpose
Purpose spoils peace whereas peace serves no purpose, that is to say, peace does not serve.
Peace
Doves sound like toys when they fly; queak-queak-queak. Is this why they have been taken to symbolize peace? No one can quite believe that they are real.
Fear
Fear is layered in the body so that each strata resonates with a specific realm.
At the head and twitching shoulders one will discover the cerebral convolutions of paranoia, a form of fearing whose source of anxiety may be loosely termed Authority. This is the threat from on high which might put the head in a noose or place the neck on a guillotine. The head, your head, is presumptuously mimicking the structure ‘hierarchy’ and therefore it has to be crushed. Courts and cops, CCTV mounted on the mast…
Lower down, fear in the heaving stomach and the suddenly hollow legs may be sourced to an anxiety that has stalked one along the gutter all the way from out ‘the jungle’. Here is the predator upon whose horns your entrails may be hung, the shadows from out off which the pack will pounce.
Secrets
What are secrets used for? If kept with the strictest adherence to secrecy then they are useless. A secret only works if it is shared. Of course, such sharing should be curtailed, held within certain demarcated realms for a certain period of time, or at least it should be pretended that this is so.
Hidden knowledge is more often than not simply banal, as is open knowledge (again, the question is to what use such material can be put). The efficiency of secrecy operates not in content per se but rather in the manner it simultaneously excludes and includes. It inspires a few to a jealous eye upon their own privilege – or sense of privilege – while the remainder are then inspired to see to it that they are included (in the secret) and that they will soon have the same sense of privilege.
Secrets are used to bring people closer together.
Original first published in Inventory: losing, finding, collecting. Vol.2 No.1 1997
Pattern
“If one holds the power of the evil eye and is frightened of his own eye, let him gaze upon the wing of his left nostril.” There are squint eyed people who settle for cake while failing for want of bread. They say: Fight fear with a ratchet, a hatchet, catch it and stab it.
The General at sex… A found text:
The General at sex
It’s true what they say
About army generals being cowards
Well the one who I’ve had the displeasure of meeting is
He really is a man of the lowest standards
A pompus git who relise on an image alone
He thinks the word patriotic is his ticket to kill…
Innocent men
who’ve far more courage in their little toe
Than he’s got in his whole body
He’s the type of man who likes to be carried [……] of using his own two feet […………..] to him are like sado masochism [………] must obey because it turns him on
SAVE OUR PIGEONS…cry Westminster Council:
A campaign has begun to reinstate Trafalgar Square’s much maligned and yet, by the Capital’s visitors at least, perennially popular bird. The pigeon has in fact been officially deemed the lesser of two evils. Anyone visiting central London recently can hardly have failed to notice that the pigeon has been replaced by the gull as our airborne pest.
“The common gull,” says one councillor, “we at first thought relatively benign. They help clear rubbish and actually reduce the pigeon population by taking their chicks. Nor will they nest beneath bridges of befoul our theatre frontages. Unfortunately,” he continues, “the greater black backed gull has also colonised our streets.” The council’s tolerance is not to be long lived. “These birds,” it is explained, “are huge and can be very aggressive. They have been known to peck out children’s eyeballs which we feel cannot be good for the holiday experience.”
Modernity
To be oppressed (or repressed, which is the more economical way of doing things,) by a giant bag of marshmallows is more permanent and economical than a regime of boot and steel.
To be oppressed by (or repressed in) a calculating combination of the two is a most dangerous prospect, very often fatal for those who lack the combination of a sweet tooth and the banality of a well turned surface.
But let us be positive about this: it is very difficult for to combine, with any degree of success, for any length of time, these two wildly incompatible substances. Not without an odour of the ridiculous staining the system.
Candyfloss and steel are bound together in a fearsomely functional system of decay inspiring stickiness, however. Luckily, again, we know how a sudden downpour will reduce any delusion of fun and freedom to a glutinous mess. You will be left in need of a bath and clutching a stick full of splinters to be promptly discarded in the mud.
Charm
Variegated leaves are wasteful. They provide surface area in excess, beyond use value. This is sometimes the result of a virus: horticulturists deliberately cultivate a disease in order to provide certain house plants with their charm.
Alone
To contemplate nature is to be alone. To commune with Nature is think this is not so. The Loner has made a myth of their status (or accepted it, piecemeal, from elsewhere).The lonely are beings left bewildered by a sense of hurt which seems tacked into every nook and cranny of their existence.
Silence
Which is all well and good but if you can’t hear it why bother?
Genius
Genius is always for other to decide and they are always wrong.
Night
“The night has a thousand eyes
and a thousand eyes
will see me true.”
Original first published in Inventory: losing, finding, collecting. Vol.1 No.1 1995
An apparently random selection of words
Autacoid: any natural internal secretion. esp. one that exerts an effect similar to a drug.
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Circumlocution: 1. an indirect way of expressing something. 2. an indirect expression.
Mansard Roof: a roof having two slopes on both sides and both ends, the lower slopes being steeper than the upper. Compare Gambrel Roof.
Mellifluous: (of sounds or utterances) smooth or honeyed, sweet.
Nadir: 1. the point on the celestial sphere directly below an observer and diametrically opposite the zenith. 2. the lowest of deepest point; depths: ‘The nadir of despair’.
Otiose: 1. serving no useful purpose: ‘Otiose language’. 2. (rare) indolent, lazy.
Anteater
A toothless mammal highly prized by the surrealists. The ant it eats exists in a complex social organization with agricultural abilities, sublime engineering skills, dumb tenaciousness and imperious, brutal tendencies. For its highways and “wars” alone the ant has gained a fatuous, unflattering comparisons with the human race. In this anthropomorphic slippage we are suddenly allowed to wonder: what beast might an ant imagine as the harbinger of its apocalypse? Could the end of the world resemble an elongated, furry snout and long, sticky tongue?
Architecture (nomadic)
In due course all architecture is nomadic. If stating the obvious then this must be doubled by adding that this statement can only be underlined by being undermined. Soil liquefaction, concrete temporality; an earthquake makes buildings of the most unlikely materials.
Yet in its extremity disaster tends to disguise a set of persistent mechanisms. The grim familiarity of tent cities might imply a somewhere more stable, a city of stone and steel and certainty. But the surface of this planet is fluid. Wind erosion, flood, human whimsy, demographic spasms and shifts will – like earthquakes – tend to make buildings disappear, reappear, and like earthquakes these processes may seem very fast but are mostly unnoticed. A tent that has been slowed down is a castle.
Armadillo
Nomadic architecture + anteater = armadillo
Glossary
The stating of the obvious via a pendant’s passion for paradox and hoping that one will be able, within these tiny spaces, to open up by contradiction a claim on some portion of a reality. To imagine, against all the evidence, even evidence clearly doctored, that imagination will hold its own and be accounted as an equal to fact. To write a glossary is to suggest that a fact is a tent that imagines itself as a castle.
Original first published in Inventory: losing, finding, collecting. Vol.3 No.3 1999