residues of a multi layered palimpsest

Three stages of the same palimpsest drawing. It is a plan to execute, the decision was to keep the parts of the letters which consists of parts of a circle. The result doesn't matter, if the drawing is beautiful, nice, good or interesting doesn't mean that much. The illusion of space by the rewritten black lines with white ink, the remains of words, sentences, texts with (heavy) content that is now forming it's own composition by accident...
Starting with a plan, with a decision such as wanting to draw a grid. Longing to draw a grid which is already the thousandth grid drawn by me. Choosing a text which has to fit in the grid, and afterwards wanting to erase the texts by scratching it. It is part of a all over plan, of an intention, of decisions made on forehand. It are conditions and by working with those conditions you can leave them, I can free myself from the boundaries created by myself because I don't have any idea nor theme to work with. Empty as a bottle. Creating conditions that can deliver unforeseen results.

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Rietveld Research Residency: the attached logo of my Surface Research project on Rietveld's pavilion . To promote or make visible through this blog to the students and tutors of the academy what that freak is doing all the time is his cube of glass. As a fish in the water of a fish bowl the researcher HJ is drawing and concentrating... Now I am filming the drawing process, trying to get closer to the act of what drawing is or how it happens. To compose the shots in a interesting way makes the film hopefully not too boring. For me it is quite exiting, but I am too close to the subject to make a judgement if it's interesting or not. Soon I hope to show a first version of filming drawing on this blog.

autumn

Rietveld's pavilion at 5:00 PM.

residue of a double layered palimpsest

In the drawing the text is erased not by scratching like it should be done in a proper palimpsest. But wiped out with white ink. There's left a residue of the circle parts of the words. Trying to go further with three "heavy" texts, to hide them in a drawing which is ornamental and decorative.

lust, becoming & destruction

A new layer of text, a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche is drawn on the scratched texts of Emile Cioran and Marquis De Sade. Should they agree of being in good company? The forcefield in the A4 sheet of Epson photo paper through the 3 different texts is becoming more interesting. Nietzsche's text is a quote found in his book Ecce Homo : (...) to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of becoming itself - that lust which also involves the lust of destruction. It is written on the scratched text of Cioran : "Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later he will regret not having left it intact". Written on the scratched-out quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction". Written on the title of this research project "Surface Research".



The detail shows the damaged flat surface of the paper, which in certain light fall looks like porcelain. Questions, what questions are coming up? To compare the palimpsest drawing with the surface of battlefields of World War I what are the similarities and differences? Often making or creating things, objects, goods, articles of art or design is to add material. Creating is adding stuff on itself, on surfaces or mixing it, so it's possible to assemble it and to build or construct pieces for a whole. The opposite is so very interesting because we ignore it, we forget it, we don't want to deal with it.
Bon, this evening I want to read the essay "a walk for a walk's sake" by Norman Bryson, perhaps tomorrow I can be clear how to continue.

landscape & palimpsest

Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in January 1916.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in October 1916.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, in 1917. After total destruction.



Fort Douaumont, near Verdun in France, seen on ground level after the total destruction.
The violent destruction during wartime changes the surface of the landscape as if it was scratched like the palimpsests are showing here before. After a heavily attack troops were digging themselves new trenches and so rewrote new lines in the surface of the soil.



It is quite a different way of looking at the topic of the palimpsest. But I would like to compare the making of palimpsests with the human writing in the ever changing landscapes. Most special with the landscapes whom changed under enormous violence. Passchendale and Ypres in Belgium, Verdun and Douaumont in north - east of France during the first world war 1914 - 1918. Villages, houses, farms, churches, buildings were totally destroyed, as in entropy, done in a short time and with tons of explosives, the surface of the earth was rewritten. What remained were traces, holes and craters of what once were 3 dimensional buildings.
Is the quote of De Sade: "In actions of mankind we recognize rather than moral or criminal acts the irresistible natural laws of creation and destruction" and looking at the photo's of the demolished landscapes changing the perspective how to deal with civilisation, culture or creation? I don't know, difficult question, stupid answer, far away topic. Perhaps in future drawings traces and residues sneak in of the digging and damaging in the surface-soil.