lost for words… Anne Lydiat. 9/9/99. ISBN 0 9535604 0 6
Initially the concept of the publication was my rejection of the dominant theoretical concepts in relation to practice. A self imposed loss of speech, an interstitial space, a linguistic and philosophical silence. Loss as an absence, a blank space - a tabula rasa. The book was placed in libraries secretly without subjecting it to the usual categorisation process. I placed the book - this space of silence - in between philosophical texts and photographed it in its contingent space. An interstitial space within a space of architectural silence. Could a Russian silence be different from a French or English silence?
As part of my research into sites of silence I visited the Beguinages in Belgium. These are religious women only enclosed spaces, walled within the town they are built in. In connection with this research I discovered the writings of Christine de Pizan and Hildegard of Bingen, Simone Weil, Sartre and De Beauvoir and several texts on women and religious spaces.
lost for words… is a blank book with a white blotting paper cover. Inside the front fly leaf it reads:
“About this book I had promised myself to say nothing…”
and continues on the back inside flap
“…There are works that entrust themselves to our discretion. We wrong them by pointing them out; or, rather, we pull them out of their proper space, which is the space of reserve and friendship. But there comes a moment when the kind of austerity that lies at the core of every important book, whether the most tender or the most painful, delivers it from us and cuts the ties. Henceforth the book no longer belongs - and that is its consecration as a book.“
Maurice Blanchot (‘TRACES’, L’AMITIE)
I secretly placed the book in the philosophy section between Kant and Lyotard in libraries I visited both in Europe and the UK thus avoiding categorisation.
See below some of the many reviews of lost for words…
Click Here for Blank Art blog
Click Here for Nothing to Read: Empty texts [abstract]
Click Here for Nothing Ventured Something Gained
Click Here for lost for words… SAIC Digital Collections
Click Here for Nothing Matters: a book about nothing, Ronald Green.
