Montreal, 3 February 2017<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dear Bartleby, and dear Bartlebys, I almost didn\u2019t write to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This began as a letter to Roman Opa\u0142ka. I had wanted to ask him questions about erasure in his project D\u00e9tail 1965 \/ 1 \u2013 \u221e, the work of a lifetime, begun in 1965, which consisted of painting successive numbers. His project started with the number one and continued until his death in 2011. Opa\u0142ka added 1% more white to each new painting, and from canvas to canvas, as time went on, the numbers seemed to gradually be erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the astounding beauty of each D\u00e9tail, the power of his work lies in the serial and diachronic nature of his undertaking, and not in just one painting. The meticulous execution of each number on a separate canvas is disconcerting, sure, but cannot rival how striking it is to see several D\u00e9tails side by side, allowing us to \u201cvisualize time,\u201d as the painter himself once said. Opa\u0142ka uses space \u2013 he doesn\u2019t have a choice \u2013 but at the same time he rejects it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opa\u0142ka\u2019s serial work self-destructs as the viewer looks at it, and recomposes itself in the eye of the next viewer, as he or she begins to read. Time is born through a programmed self-destruction<\/em> of space that requires us to abandon the understated location of each number and also of each painting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And all at once this far-fetched question occurs to me: is it in fact the numbers that refuse space? Of course not, they are well and truly there. But Opa\u0142ka\u2019s hand seems to refuse space, never coming back to the same place, sweeping across the canvas and carrying us along with it, moving ahead in time. We could say the same thing about every painter because once the line is placed on the canvas, it is not removed or redone \u2013 even if it\u2019s reworked or covered over, it has been done. But Opa\u0142ka makes this the subject that orients his entire work. He exacerbates linearity by painting the succession of numbers, and places the question of temporality at the centre of his project. From my point of view, this position highlights the central role of movement and temporality in the destruction of space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The work situates us in the movement. By moving ahead of the 1% of white that accumulates from canvas to canvas, the pictorial space erases itself and the figurative world disappears further and further. The white that is first manifest pictorially becomes, little by little, sheer light. This makes me think of the biblical story of Saul moving forward on the road to Damascus, blinded by the light; this is what I mean by the destruction of space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What would a dance look like in which the dancer never stepped in the same place twice? In which she or he never repeated the same movements? Would it be Samuel Beckett\u2019s Quad (1981), but without the repeated trajectories? And would it end with the death of the last dancer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the point at which I abandoned my letter, saying to myself, like you, \u201cI would prefer not to.\u201d I realize as I write to you now that refusal and abandonment have their own momentum, they always take us somewhere \u2013 maybe even towards a goal \u2013 but a goal that eludes us, one that even becomes more and more obscure, self-destructing, like Opa\u0142ka\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rauschenberg\u2019s painting Erased De Kooning (1953) comes to mind. I\u2019m attaching a reproduction for your pleasure and reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next I dived into Suite for Barbara Loden (2012), a strange book by Nathalie L\u00e9ger about actress Barbara Loden and her character, Wanda, in the film by the same name that she directed in 1971. The story is sometimes confusing \u2013 the author of the book speaks simultaneously about herself, about the actress (Loden), and about the character of Wanda, and everything gets tangled together so that ultimately only an object remains: the bag. This stable object in the grip of the character of Wanda. This fragile material, white plastic, that Wanda drags around everywhere. This thing that gets filled and emptied throughout Wanda\u2019s life. I remember a certain story Marguerite Duras tells a friend. Having watched the slow death of a fly over several minutes, she began to speak to it, and when she realized this, she knew it would be possible for her to go crazy, right there, in that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I turn back to Suite for Barbara Loden and read an excerpt from an interview in Cahiers du cin\u00e9ma with Claude Chabrol and Isabelle Huppert:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Les Cahiers du cin\u00e9ma: what happens from now until filming starts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chabrol: We snooze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Huppert: We sleep, to become absent. Go inside oneself. [\u2026] The more we are absent, the more chances we have to be present for the camera. And him: \u201cI don\u2019t believe the art of the actor consists in getting outside of oneself, it\u2019s more the opposite: to go even deeper within.\u201d And her: \u201cWhat seems important to me in an actor is their passivity\u201d (in L\u00e9ger 2012, 84).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wasn\u2019t this the case for you, Bartleby?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m standing before my bookshelf again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I examine the books one by one, hoping to find an echo to my questions about erasure in the process of creation. To my great pleasure, I discover your kinsfolk there: Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot, and several of their literary characters. These Bartlebys are different. They don\u2019t necessarily refuse writing, but like Roman Opa\u0142ka, they refuse space. Their characters are sometimes caught in a particular space. I\u2019m thinking of Happy Days (1963) or Waiting for Godot (1952) by Beckett, or of the characters in Awaiting Oblivion (1962) by Blanchot \u2013 here\u2019s an excerpt: \u201cSince when had he begun to wait? Since he freed himself for waiting by losing the desire for particular things, even the desire for the end of things\u201d (1962, 39).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could tell you about my choreography 0101, in which the three parts are gradually erased. And I could speak to you about Edouard Lev\u00e9 and his book \u0152uvres, which makes me think of you because he describes works that don\u2019t exist. I see an erasure in this, a certain withdrawal of expectations about production, an anti-productive process that\u2019s very much in relation to your work, but I\u2019ll stop here \u2013 I would prefer not to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, Bartleby, I wonder if, in writing to you, if in revisiting my works and those of others within the framework of my PhD, I\u2019m not in the process of erasing myself as well. In getting involved in this doctoral line of inquiry, my goal was to concentrate on a single project, to do less and to distil, but it\u2019s not that simple: how do you manage to lock yourself away?<\/p>\n\n\n\n During these four years of the PhD, I\u2019ve chosen to be less productive, and I notice that not being productive requires, curiously, a great deal of courage. Beyond the personal questions it provokes, living as a recluse, \u201cpreferring not to\u201d do, not producing, being desynchronized, means in some ways becoming transparent, even ignored, but I feel an incredible freedom and that in itself is priceless. Thank you, Bartleby, and all the Bartlebys \u2013 you give me courage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lynda<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Montreal, 3 February 2017 Dear Bartleby, and dear Bartlebys, I almost didn\u2019t write to you. 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