I am pretty new to blogging having only been on here since November. As such I am basking in this new communication with people I have not yet met, and the wonderful response I have received through blogspot and my facebook page. It was so nice to get a message from Ausrine Kersanskaite who is studying fine art in London and shares some of the same interests and concerns as me… I offer a little more here from the introduction of my MA thesis, and wish her the best of luck in her studies… (this excerpt does not include footnotes and references)
‘Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida has essentially underpinned the concept behind this work; that illegible writing in art might convey the contradictory nature of: language, indoctrinated systems and ‘meaning’ itself…’
‘…[written language] is a given system, an external system of marks, sounds and meanings that must be complied with to operate successfully. In this way it could be thought of as an imposed order for communication: if we don’t speak ‘correctly’ we can be misunderstood, if we can’t read or write we are ‘illiterate’ and thereby excluded from the written communication and knowledge of the world. Handwriting itself promotes a prescriptive idea of correctness: it is a skill-based action that involves hand-eye co-ordination, memory, and an alphabetic system that is learnt. This is instilled through systematic education and to achieve writing, letters are practiced over and over again in an effort to create legible meaning on the page. Writing the alphabet is one of the elementary things taught at school, and it is through schooling (an authority system) that handwriting is ultimately ‘sanctioned’, and illegibility is banned. Because of this educational specific, writing may be considered in some ways symbolic of social and cultural oppression: a privilege, and by that, selective. We might also consider that empires and totalitarian systems have ultimately been administrated through the means of writing. Writing then, might be seen as emblematic of power-driven systems: a doctrine and order which seeks to specify and contain meaning and that is in fact, the tool of a hegemonic elite, a ruling class and biased society...
But just as written language may be seen as something contentious or controlling, writing is also a powerful tool for the individual and the collective. The handwritten mark might be considered a vital sign of the individual in a world of impersonal commodities: a fundamental emblem of individual expression, freedom, and power. Words are available to everyone and carry an authority that can be used for personal and politicised motivations, and as a means of subversion. Writing offers the user a means of personal expression and protest. It can act as an exposure of the self; a personal code or declaration that is both ‘personal and personalised’. It can also be made anonymously, and still powerfully subversive, as found in forms of graffiti writing, which are an attack on a physical environment, and appear as a declaration of an individual or collective expressed through the handwritten mark...'
'...I hope to establish that the handwritten mark can transcend the specificity and context of language in favour of visual and material value and significance: opening up the possibilities for the written mark in art and enforcing the idea that the handwritten can carry meaning beyond a conventional concept of language…’(Taken from 'A Problematic View of Handwriting')
‘…when the context of language is taken away one might say that the written mark ‘reverts’ to drawing, and as an abstract gesture, is therefore open to a different kind of ‘reading’. When reconsidered as a purely graphic visual gesture, without the ‘distraction’ of language, writing is less dependent on a fixed linguistic code and conceptual, objective meaning, and is more attuned to an open interpretation, which in turn creates a space for freedom. Words and writing are not easily severed from meaning and their initial function; to be freed from reference, and freed from a linguistic role, the signifier and signified must be disengaged: the writing must be ‘illegible’ so that it can exist as pure visual form. I hope now to demonstrate in a simple way, how the illegible handwritten mark can manifest as image.’(Taken from 'Writing and Drawing: The Handwritten as Material Object')
'…In looking at two examples of ‘foreign’ (not English) and anonymous handwriting found in the street… these examples of writing are intended to promote a response in the viewer that contests a usual response in looking at written text. In the loss of a ‘readable’ message I hope to establish a material and visual significance beyond the functional written message, by considering the ‘abstract’ nature of ‘illegible’ handwriting…’
‘Evidently writing is essentially a visual thing: we have to see it with our eyes for it to function and to understand its meaning we have to read it, but the visual nature of it – the marks made and the materials used, still exist and operate with or without our comprehension of the words written. They retain a visual significance without a primary conceptual function. I am reiterating that writing, because of its graphic and material nature, can exercise a visual effect beyond linguistic content. But what is that visual effect? In considering the illegible handwritten mark purely as graphic expression, severed from function and ‘readability’, what is left behind? Is there a message in the illegible?’(Taken from 'Looking at Illegibility')
Copyright, L. Travers 2009.
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