The race is on. Which will be ready first – the gallery or my work? Little more than 2 and a half months ago, it was decided that a gallery would be built and that I would make its first exhibition. In one week today, it all begins. Here are some photos of where we are today. We both feel that everything is completely on schedule. The garage is now a beautiful, white space and  I am once again, making art on the kitchen table – still the best place for mixing stuff up.

Monday, the windows and the doors go in the gallery. Yochiro-san showed me the special ledge he made for swallows to build their nest and a table and chairs will go outside in front of the gallery for smoking and just hanging out. I chose to work with 1 poem that I wrote here and variations of 3 others that are from my Riens-nothings book. They were all translated from French to Japanese by Masashi Ogura. I’ll include them in their English and French versions below. Right now I am working on several fronts at the same time – nothing unusual there. Two works are ready and will be completed on installation. I still have to finish waterproofing some letters and a big paper bowl that will be filled with sumi (ink) to float the words from one of the poems. I have to make some more shifu (paper thread) and a few more words in English and in French to cast. One work will be made completely on location – small paper letters – vowels only of a very transparent paper pulp will be couched directly onto the window.

I will try to speak in Japanese at the opening and I think the best way will be for me to suggest single words for each of the works, as if each work began with a word: breath, suspension, transformation, whisper, spider, spin, universe. For now the plan is to wait until the opening to add the letters to the sumi bowl as a kind of performance and as part of my opening words-transformation is the word for this work.

I think of these works as thought-poems. If I can find how to expand that idea, I’ll add more here later. For now, back to the kitchen table!

Paper words

1

 

On the other side of touch

in the shadow of words

an old poem waits

 

 

 

2

Some days a bridge

some days a wall

the words between us

3

 

The too full desires the too empty

The shadow of one: the fullness of the other

Chaos, once another word for nothingness

 

 

4

Ode to paper,

 

You are emptiness

and I the spider

if I cannot spin you in these words

I will weave you in others

 

Sounds wound around silence

word after word

waiting

for the wind to carry

 

 

 

 

Mots de papier

 

1

 

À l’ombre des mots

de l’autre côté du toucher

un vieux poème attend

 

 

2

 

parfois un pont

parfois un mur

les mots entre nous

 

 

3

 

Le trop plein désire le trop vide

L’ombre de l’un – la plénitude de l’autre

Le chaos, jadis un mot pour désigner le néant

 

4

Ode à papier

 

Tu es le vide

Et moi, l’araignée

Si je ne peux pas te tisser avec ces mots,

Je te filerai dans d’autres

 

Mot après mot,

les sons

files autour du silence

attendent

le vent à emporter