da dove sto chiamando

Andrew Iacobucci

2 Feb – 9 Mar 2024

Supported by: Italian Cultural Institute in Hong Kong

Novalis Art Design

G/F, 197 Hollywood Road, Hong Kong

Language Is Shape Is Form Is Language

In these works, the exploration delves around the limits and struggles of language. When thoughts need to be translated into something to be communicated and understood, they have to shed some of their ambiguity and the most liminal aspects of meaning. We all share that moment when we feel utterly unable to express what we felt or a complex thought that sounded perfectly formed in our mind in clear sentences. That indecisiveness, that feeling of inadequacy, that clear feeling that words are futile devices or incomplete.

Language is a code: to be understood it has to be shareable, cleared from every kind of personal experience and limits in one’s communication skills. This inevitably leads to a loss, or at least a simplification, a process that we learn at school by gradually exploring language and its aspects, its rules, grammar and logic. It’s almost like the process of getting an object in focus while using a camera: the object loses its blurred contours and acquires a definitive, unmistakable shape. Children in their first school years make their first attempts at communication mostly through scribbles and drawings. They are still in a process when their expression is not yet encoded into proper language. Those drawings, carefully collected and then embroidered through industrial methods on canvases of different fabrics, are the means through which the artist explore these topics. All of these scribbles hold meaning, now impossible to understand, hidden behind those apparently chaotic forms.

But the meaning itself is not the focus of this research. After all, it would be impossible for us to grasp what those minds were exploring while drawing. The point is that those drawings are a form of language before the process of codification and thus, more connected with the full range of perception and expression. A form of language that is formless, susceptible to the deepest thoughts and instinct, wildly more spontaneous. While we usually just scrap those scribbled papers, here they are selected, retraced using specific vectorial software, composed and redrawn to become forms to explore, finally stretched on large fabrics in bright colours. Echoing tapestries or flags, humble scribbles become precious testimony of a language unknown.

Embroidered not by hand, but with industrial sewing machines, the detached process gives back a degree of objectivity. The hand of the artist is not there to add something, but only to select and arrange, place and underline. The support is not a generic fabric but often cuts from fashion which are highly technical textiles, precious and specific. Stretched on large formats, scribbles are scaled to monumental sizes, bright and explosive colours almost veer into the digital. A throwable piece of paper is transformed into something to contemplate and interrogate. A collection of mysterious shapes, a Rosetta stele of a language before there was language, example of elliptical symbols and joyous expressions of thoughts, memories, images. Recognized in their preciousness, rendered in a slow and methodical process, those drawings achieve a new role, saved and celebrated in these works. An example of the wild possibilities of language and the struggles of holding expression between the rails of communication, a burst of reaction towards the limits and struggles of translating the flow of thoughts into balanced, structured discourse.

語言是形狀是形式是語言

透過這些作品，藝術家探討語言的限制與掙扎。當思想被翻譯成可供溝通和理解的東西時，就必須放棄一些含糊和模稜兩可的意思。我們都經歷過，一些在腦海中聽起來完美構思的複雜思想或感覺，當要說出來時卻變得難以清晰表達。這是一種難以解 釋、無可奈何的感覺，令人明顯感受到，言辭是一種徒勞或不完美的工具。

語言是一種代碼:為了讓別人理解，它必須是共用的，必須撇除各種個人經歷和溝通 技巧的限制。這不可避免地導致一些喪失，或至少被簡化，而這正是在學校，當我 們學習語言，逐步探索它的規則、語法和邏輯的過程。這類似於用相機對焦物件的流程:物體先失去它模糊的輪廓，取而代之是明確無誤的形狀。孩童在他們的第一個學 年，通常利用塗鴉和繪畫首次嘗試與他人交流。他們處於表達能力未被編碼成正確語言的階段。現在，這些繪畫被仔細地收集起來，隨後通過製衣工藝繡在不同織物的畫布上，藝術家並籍此探索上述的主題。這些塗鴉蘊含著現在無法理解的意義，意義隱 藏在這些看似雜亂無章的形式背後。

但意義本身不是本次研究的重點。畢竟，我們不可能掌握繪畫之人當時所探索的內 容。重點在於這些圖畫代表一種未經過編纂過程的語言形式，因此，它們與全方位的感知與表達有更緊密的聯繫。這種語言形式是無形的、自發性的，極受最深層次的思想和本能的影響。通常我們會把這些塗鴉扔掉，而在這裡它們卻被挑選出來，使用特 定的向量軟件臨摹，組合並重繪成可供探索的形式，最後以鮮豔的色彩在大型布面上被放大。它們令人想起掛毯或旗幟，這些看似不起眼的塗鴉成為了一種珍貴的未知語言的見證。

這些作品不以人手刺繡，而是由工業縫紉機完成，這個抽離的過程令作品贖回一定的客觀性。藝術家的手不是要來添加什麼，而是用來選擇和排列、放置和強調。作品的支撐面不是普通布料，它們大多是從成衣裁剪下來，都是很特別且特殊的專門紡織 品。這些塗鴉被延伸到巨大的尺寸，呈現恍如數碼影像的爆炸性鮮艷色彩。一張有如廢紙的塗鴉，被轉化為一個值得思考和審視的東西。一眾神秘的形狀集合起來——有 如一塊前語言年代的羅塞塔石碑，記載思想、記憶與形象的隱晦符號與愉悦的表達。 以此，這些圖像的價值獲得了認可，它們以一個緩慢而有條不紊的過程而被賦予新的角色，保存在這些作品中以供賞析。這些作品展示出語言令人意想不到的可能性，以 及在不同溝通軌道之間情感表達的掙扎，它們是將意識流轉化為平衡而結構性的話語時，所面對的限制和掙扎而出作的反應。

Scattered Thoughts

The general concept here is working on generative grammar with a synthetic approach. If we consider the human mind as a computer then its software is language, pre-installed since birth as an innate function, although it needs the environment and other certain conditions to activate and fully work. There are specific studies of Semiology that focus on the dysfunctions of this “software” (for example, deaf mute in Nicaragua and the so called “wolf-children”) to explore the behaviours of this software. By taking language as an innate computational activity, we imply that every human being is born with some form of it. Every human being will share some similarities in the articulation of the concept “tree” for example, and won’t commit certain mistakes within the construction of certain phrases and logical compositions, even if coming from very different environmental conditions. What does all of this mean? That the linguistic expression, even a very simple sentence, uses the basic elements (subject, object, verb) as keys on a keyboard, as pieces from a puzzle, that are configured following a certain order. It’s like we are born with a basic keyboard, with fixed and unchangeable placement of characters and symbols. Of course, there is an almost infinite variation in expression, but it’s not the focus here. What’s fascinating is that it has been demonstrated how there are certain kind of mistakes (non-grammatical ones) that the human brain simply cannot make. Mistakes that deal with the spatial construction of a sentence: “I missed the flight” will never become “The Missed I Flight”. There’s like an innate order between things, that is not specifically imparted at school and can’t be easily changed. The fact that language is innate doesn’t make it necessarily work though. It is a software that needs some kind of push from the environment. The fact that researchers in semiotics focused on certain categories (children, deaf mutes, aphasic people) is not by chance. Those are exemplary cases where you can really understand the ways language gets formed, in its very initial moments. This “critical period” is a specific timeframe when language can be absorbed and learned: if the “software” doesn’t get “installed” before that period it won’t work as easily or in some cases, at all. This time frame is between 0 to 12 years old, that’s why it’s easier for kids to learn foreign languages. The case of “wolf-children” who were never exposed to forms of language is an example to understand the importance for the environmental conditions that further develop some specific forms of communication. In those children’s case not even the greatest linguist with the most advanced training can revive any ability in forming language.

There’s also the interest in considering symbols in a state that precedes their acquisition of meaning. Symbols in their purest, immediate form of marks traced on a surface, without generating any content yet. It is research in aesthetic, form and on the capacity to signify of any kind symbol, focusing on its container rather than on the content.

It’s not research strictly on language, but on “language before it becomes language”, spoken and used by a shared community. It’s like language reduced to its bare skeleton, almost a pure structure. Removed from its expressive quality, it is like a genetical code, a graphic form of information.

Our way of orienting ourselves in our civilization is completely disarticulated and regressed to a state of primordial configurations. Focusing on the thought before it becomes informed by content, in this sense, is a work that crosses semiotics, without the ambition of becoming scientific research. The filter here is different, more aerial on a more existential subtext. It is the suspended question “What can one say…?” even before it gets asked. It is pondering on margins, exploring punctuations, parenthesis and pauses in a discourse that doesn’t want to be perfectly understood but only transformed and diluted. It is an examination on the take by Wittgenstein on language: the linguistic play becomes a painterly element. It is learning to consider language (for example, the code of road signage) as something dissolving on the asphalt of incommunicability but still able to tell you something about parking spots and placement. Although we can feel the impossibility of communication in our world, we still accept the fact that we park a car in exactly how the road signage tells us, we keep using that language. In truth, in a world that tends to categorize anything, being in the ineffable, in the pauses during the discourse, among the errors is a precise intention. After all, in theatre, moments of silence are precisely crafted to create tension (through “spatialization” of language), in the same way the absence of meaning creates “space” and rhythm in language.

Exploring the state of illness or dysfunction is not a random choice nor a cold specialistic one, but a heuristic way (in the sense that it looks for the original, primordial forces that caused something) to understand causes and conditions, to obtain a correct and balanced state. This is why drawings and shapes are from children who aren’t educated to the meanings of letters and forms, who are able to express a form of language not yet coded nor normalised. A condition of “normality” is uninteresting in terms of this research since these imperceptible functions are hidden, impossible to reach. It is the dysfunction that creates cracks through which to understand the exact moment when the muscle of the tongue starts to articulate a proper language. It is like being able to witness the building site of a very complex architecture, to see how every brick is placed, how the balance of weight is distributed, how the structure gets designed. When everything is done it is not easy to introduce change anymore. In some ways it is like the work of a palaeontologist that tries to understand the evolution of certain species from fossils. Why did the giraffe develop a long neck at a certain point? What are the rules that allow for certain characteristics to thrive? How should we read and understand change in nature, what are its codes? These are some questions that great researchers have asked themselves and brought about the discovery of DNA. The base idea was that nature can be taken as a huge computational software with a fixed structure, pre-ordered, that can take several detours and ramifications without altering the initial codex. An interesting mix of variation and change, language and chaos that decrees the laws of the world since its creation.

All of western culture is based upon a binary thinking process. It is from contraposition, from contrast that identity is created. A to be an A must be different from B. A to be A must be the same as A. So says Aristotle.

Why are we so interested in origins? Because of that period in time when “things were defined”. The deep perversion of the researcher of antiquities is to be able to participate in that moment when “things were decided,” a moment that he feels like he’s been left out from. How did it happen? What were the — currently unknown — rules? What is left now for us to see, is quite often a sort of package, ready to be taken by someone but not changed anymore, closed to subsequent interventions. What really happened back then, the very first time things were developing? The fossil of those moments is what is left to us. The trace of an evolutionary process for us to see, a kind of testimony of something that happened but is no more. An invisible copy, a trace of a lost .jpeg file that is corrupted forever.

Fossils are in a way the first written form that nature has left to write the history of the Earth. But they are a very peculiar kind of writing: a material and structural form of a lifeform that is no more. Life on earth can be interpreted as a genetical code, that constantly evolves while keeping a flexible skeleton. So, it is the DNA: at the same time a specific computational software that allows the human species to be itself, but also a vivid writing through which we read our world.

There’s a huge work of weaving, carried on in a very specific way. It has to do with the layering of language: it is like a fossil that is buried in our genetic code, it layers with time and gradually simplifies itself, stretching over, reducing into simpler forms. Language is here embroidered, extended, diluted, treated like a weave. A trace on a sheet of paper becomes like a capillary fibre, a graphic string of DNA or a vectorial line on Photoshop. The world of graphic design is a visual metaphor of this conceptual apparatus. We think through layers: levels where traces and colours work as sediment for the subsequent shape.

Between traces on canvases there’s a playful relationship. A tennis game between symbols, playing in different teams but with similar paths. There aren’t winners, no one dominates the play in a perpetual equilibrium, light and balanced.

What if we reached a more extreme position? What if we skimmed language even further, removing any form of reference? What is left of a shape in space? What can it say that we don’t already know? And if moved in another environment, what will it be able to say? And what if it didn’t have anything to say, what if it became a silent form? What kind of cognitive events can be created with this “reloaded” form, when we are not able to recognize it anymore? If we see the shape of a tree but everyone forgot that it’s a tree, how do we live in this forest of symbols without names? So if all of this doesn’t have any content, it is a work that aims to ask a suspended question, waiting for a lost answer.

 

思緒紊亂

基本概念是，以綜合方法來研究一種生成性的文法。如果我們把人腦視為一台電腦， 那麼它的軟件就是語言，而且自出娘胎便預裝好，是一個與生俱來的功能，不過它需要特定的環境和條件才能啟動並充分發揮作用。符號學中有專門研究來探討這「軟 件」的功能障礙(例如尼加拉瓜的聾啞人士，和所謂的「狼孩」)，以檢驗這軟體的表現。將語言視為一種與生俱來的計算活動，意味著每個人生來就具有某種形式的語言能力。例如，每個人在表達「樹」這個概念時都會有一些相似之處，即使他們來自截然不同的環境情況，也不會在構建某些短句和邏輯組合時犯上某些錯誤。這一切意味著什麼呢?即是語言表達，就算是非常簡單的句子，其基本要素(主語、賓語、動 詞)的使用也有如鍵盤上的按鍵或拼圖中的碎片，都是按照一定的順序配置。好像我們生來就有一個基本的鍵盤，上面字元和符號的位置都是固定不變。當然，表達的方式變化無窮，但這不是這裡的重點。真正有趣的是，研究證明有些非文法的錯誤是人腦根本無法犯上的。這些錯誤涉及句子的空間結構:「我錯過了那班飛機」永遠不會變成「那班錯過我飛機」，這種次序不是在學時被灌輸的，也不能輕易改變。語言是與生俱來的事實，並不意味著它總是有效運作。它是一種需要被環境推動的軟件。事 實上，符號學學者將研究重點放在某些類別的人身上(如兒童、聾啞人、失語者)並非偶然。在這些典型案例中，你可以了解到語言在最初的階段時如何形成。這個「關鍵期」是吸收和學習語言的一個特定時段:如果「軟體」沒有在這段時間之前「安裝」好，它就不會輕易地成功運作，或在某些情況下甚至不能啟動。這個時段是在 0到12歲之間，亦是小孩得別善於學習外語的原因。從未接觸過任何語言的「狼孩」 是一個很好的例子，讓我們了解到環境條件對進一步發展某些特定溝通形式的重要 性。在這些「狼孩」的案例中，即使受過最先進訓練的、最偉大的語言學家，也無法恢復孩子們建立語言的能力。

此外，也值得思考符號在獲得其意義之前的狀態。在尚未產生任何內容之前，符號以其最純粹、最直接的形式在一個表面上留下痕跡。這類研究是探討任一種符號類型的美學、形式，及其表意能力，重點在於容器本身而並非它的內容。

而嚴格來說，這不是關於語言的研究，而是研究一個社區共同使用的「成為語言之前 的語言」。這好像把語言簡化為最基本的骨架，幾乎只餘下最純粹的結構。語言的表達能力被剝離，變成有如一套基因代碼，一種圖形化的資訊形式。

在我們的文明中，我們自我定位的方式已經完全脫節，並倒退到原始配置的狀態。探 討內容出現之前的思想，從這個意義上來說，是一項跨符號學的工作，而不是想進行科學研究。這當中的觀點有所分別，更為傾向於鳥瞰式的存在主義潛臺詞。這是一個懸而未決的問題，是在「一個人能說什麼……?」這問題出現前的問題。這是邊緣化的思考，探索話語中的標點、括弧和停頓，這些話語不想被完全理解，而只想被轉化和稀釋。這是審視維特根斯坦對語言的看法:語言遊戲成為一種繪畫元素。我們嘗試把語言(例如道路標誌的代碼)視為一種溶解在無法溝通的瀝青路上的東西，但它仍能告訴你泊車位置的資訊。儘管我們感覺到，在這個世界裡溝通是如此的不可能，但我們仍然接受這個事實:我們完全遵照道路標誌表示的方式泊車，我們繼續使用那種 語言。事實上，在這個傾向把萬事萬物歸類的世界裡，在不可言喻之中、在話語的停頓中，在種種錯誤之中都蘊含著一個明確的意圖。畢竟，在戲劇中，沉默的時刻正是為了製造張力(通過語言的「空間化」)而精心設計的，同樣地，意義的缺失也為語言創造了「空間 」和節奏。

要去探究疾病或功能障礙的狀態，這不是一個任意的選擇，也不是冷冰冰的專業，而 是一種探索的方式(在於尋找導致事情發生的原始、最初的力量)去了解原因和條件，從而獲得一種正確和平衡的狀態。這就是為什麼，這些繪畫和圖形來自於未受過 教育去認識文字形狀和意義的兒童，他們能夠表達一種尚未編碼或規範化的語言形式。這項研究對「正常」的狀態並不感興趣，因為這些難以察覺的功能是隱藏著而且無法觸及的。正是功能障礙造成了裂縫，通過它們，我們知到舌頭肌肉在哪一刻開始能夠正確地表達語言。這，有如目睹一座異常複雜的建築工地，看著每一塊磚頭是如何放置、重量是如何平衡分配、結構是如何被設計出來。當一切都完成之後，就不容易去改變了。從某方面來看，這就像古生物學家，試圖通過化石了解某些物種的進化 過程。為什麼長頸鹿在某個階段會演化出長長的頸?是什麼定律令某些特徵得以繁衍?我們應該如何閱讀和理解自然的變化，它的密碼是什麼?這都是一些偉大的科研人員所提出的問題，也是去氧核糖核酸(DNA)被發現的起因。而最基本的想法是， 我們可以把自然看作一個巨大的計算軟件，它有固定的結構、預先排好的序列，在不 改變初始代碼的情況下，可以走出不同的路徑，帶來不同的後果。這是變異與變化的有趣混合，這些語言和混沌決定了世界自誕生以來的定律。

整個西方文化都是建基於二元思維過程。正是從對立和對比中產生了身份。A要成為 A，必須與B不同。A要成為A，必須與A相同。亞里斯多德如是說。

我們為什麼對起源如此感興趣?因為那是一段「事物被定義」的時間。古物研究者最 深層次的扭曲心理，就是能夠參與這個「事物被決定」的時刻，一個他覺得被排除在外的時刻。這是如何發生的?那些現時我們不知道的定律是什麼?現在留給我們看到的，往往只是一種包裝，它可以隨時被人拿去，但不會再改變，也無法再去干預它。 在事物最初發生的一刻，究竟發生了什麼事?那些時刻留給我們的就只有化石。我們 看到的是演化過程的痕跡，見證一些發生過但已不復存在的事情。是一個隱形的副本，一個因損壞而永遠丟失的 .jpeg 檔案 。

某程度上，化石是第一種書寫形式，是大自然留下來用作書寫地球歷史的。但它也是 一種非常特殊的書寫形式:由已不復存在的生命所形成的物質和結構。我們可以把 地球上的生命理解為一種基因代碼，在不斷演化亦同時保持著一個靈活的架構。因 此，DNA一方面是一種特定的計算軟件，它使人類進化成如今的物種，但同時也是一 種生動的書寫，通過它我們得以閱讀這個世界。

這是一項巨大的編織工作，並以一種非常特定的方式進行。它是關於語言的分層:就 像埋藏在我們基因密碼中的一個化石，隨著時間的推移而疊加，逐漸簡化、延伸，還 原成更簡單的形式。在此，語言在這裡被繡上、拉伸、稀釋，就像編織一樣。紙張上 的痕跡成為了一條毛細纖維、一條DNA長鏈圖形，又或者是Photoshop上的一條向量 線。平面設計是這個概念工具的視覺隱喻。我們通過圖層來思考:在這些層次中，痕跡和色彩就像沉澱物一樣，為隨後的形狀服務。

畫布上的痕跡之間存在著一種有趣的關係。這是一場符號之間的網球賽，雖有不同的隊伍，但各自的路徑相若。他們之中沒有贏家，沒有人在永恆的均勢、輕盈與平衡之中主導比賽，我們可否採取更極端的立場呢?如果我們進一步削減語言，去除任何形式的參照物，那麼空間中的這個形狀其實還剩下什麼?它能說出什麼我們不知道的東西?如果把它移到另一個環境中，它又能說什麼呢?如果它無話可說了，變成了一個沉默的形狀呢?當我們無法再識別它時，這種「重新下載」的形式又能帶來怎樣的認知事件呢?如果我們看到一棵樹的形狀，但所有人都忘記了它是一棵樹，那麼我們又如何在這個無名符號的森林中過活?因此，如果這一切都沒有任何內容，這個作品就 是要提出一個懸而未決的問題，並等待著一個失落的答案。

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