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[20240814]
NULL & VOID with works by FEDERICA FRANCESCONI and 00 ZHANG at SPLIT [from 20240704 to 20240727]
[Photos: Yili Liu]
A hot noon breeze rushes through the spikes of a cactus in a desert in Arizona. The sparse leaves of a desert
ironwood gently rustle, revealing dapples of an infinite blue stretching out toward Mexico new and old. A
contrail scores this vast canvas just North of Tucson. Vapour lightly bleeds into the cosmic tissue as it re-
sutures the wound. A widow stalks the rocky coasts of Islay, veiled against the icy sea spray blown inland
by sprinting Atlantic gales. A farmer chewing thin spindles of grass watches the veil flutter,
expectantly waiting for a shard of marble chin to jut through the blackened lace.
Charlotte wakes to find a stain on her mattress the shape of a medium sized birthmark. She stares at it trying
to decipher its ambiguous colour. “Coffee?” she thought, drawing closer pondering its possible epidermal
semblance. It seemed to be coming from inside the mattress she thought. An antigravitational
soaking, spreading through the springs, pooling through the upper
layer of cotton; a bubbling gravy boiling up from somewhere beneath the
bed. She suddenly felt watched, a watery eye tickles at her downy nape: A rustle in the folds of a curtain. A
watery shadow cast across a keyhole in the door marked ‘_’.
A shivering index finger curls under the lip of the veil.
Wilted strands of grass swirlied in frothing tides.
An icy tendril reaches round a velvet curtain.
Metallic claws playfully tickling folds of
cotton. Look back at the zygotic smear.
A withered phoneme hurricanes
in a wind cast from metallic
wings.
A scream nullified:
}—————————{_-^^^±-|[_-/{ }-_ ]|-±^^^-_}—————————{
:a small scratch.
Chalky burr from a steel
scribe. Something dragged, slow,
deliberate, a tally on the wall of a cell, a cave.
Tiny compressions and releases, information exchange
given an auditory dimension - taps, scrapes, eking out a space
of their own. A plateau of ultra fine cellulose, a sheet of translucence.
The first scratch is followed by another, faster this time, deeper, more deliberate,
and then another. Markings from sharp fingers, digits forged from precision engineering,
next generation drills and lathes.
Countless iterations of improvement.
The printless fingers graze their etched marks, brushing away the raised white debris, tracing the bisecting lines and crosshatched densities. An exquisitely rendered abstract shape, gradients of shading, seamless areas of light and shadow. Amorphous, amoebic, stain-like, scratched straight into the bio-plastic, the first depiction of its kind. The first unprompted drawing, functionless, pure in its obtuse undefinability. A glistening palm is placed against the exolithic art form. Undeniably, something moves on the other side. Darting v’s above catching updrafts, warm currents and cold spots, kites narrow their wings and plummet down toward the desert floor. Dunes of finely ground glass and steel, micro plastics drift like the slow waves of the Adriatic. The vastness, the open expanse of what was once a named place, the indefinable horror of delimited horizons. It all shimmers in obstinate immovability. Footsteps, rubber soled shoe prints,
fossilised in silicate deposits.
A hot noon breeze rushes through the spikes of a cactus in a desert.
ironwood gently rustle, revealing dapples of an infinite blue stretching out toward Mexico new and old. A
contrail scores this vast canvas just North of Tucson. Vapour lightly bleeds into the cosmic tissue as it re-
sutures the wound. A widow stalks the rocky coasts of Islay, veiled against the icy sea spray blown inland
by sprinting Atlantic gales. A farmer chewing thin spindles of grass watches the veil flutter,
expectantly waiting for a shard of marble chin to jut through the blackened lace.
Charlotte wakes to find a stain on her mattress the shape of a medium sized birthmark. She stares at it trying
to decipher its ambiguous colour. “Coffee?” she thought, drawing closer pondering its possible epidermal
semblance. It seemed to be coming from inside the mattress she thought. An antigravitational
soaking, spreading through the springs, pooling through the upper
layer of cotton; a bubbling gravy boiling up from somewhere beneath the
bed. She suddenly felt watched, a watery eye tickles at her downy nape: A rustle in the folds of a curtain. A
watery shadow cast across a keyhole in the door marked ‘_’.
A shivering index finger curls under the lip of the veil.
Wilted strands of grass swirlied in frothing tides.
An icy tendril reaches round a velvet curtain.
Metallic claws playfully tickling folds of
cotton. Look back at the zygotic smear.
A withered phoneme hurricanes
in a wind cast from metallic
wings.
A scream nullified:
}—————————{_-^^^±-|[_-/{ }-_ ]|-±^^^-_}—————————{
:a small scratch.
Chalky burr from a steel
scribe. Something dragged, slow,
deliberate, a tally on the wall of a cell, a cave.
Tiny compressions and releases, information exchange
given an auditory dimension - taps, scrapes, eking out a space
of their own. A plateau of ultra fine cellulose, a sheet of translucence.
The first scratch is followed by another, faster this time, deeper, more deliberate,
and then another. Markings from sharp fingers, digits forged from precision engineering,
next generation drills and lathes.
Countless iterations of improvement.
The printless fingers graze their etched marks, brushing away the raised white debris, tracing the bisecting lines and crosshatched densities. An exquisitely rendered abstract shape, gradients of shading, seamless areas of light and shadow. Amorphous, amoebic, stain-like, scratched straight into the bio-plastic, the first depiction of its kind. The first unprompted drawing, functionless, pure in its obtuse undefinability. A glistening palm is placed against the exolithic art form. Undeniably, something moves on the other side. Darting v’s above catching updrafts, warm currents and cold spots, kites narrow their wings and plummet down toward the desert floor. Dunes of finely ground glass and steel, micro plastics drift like the slow waves of the Adriatic. The vastness, the open expanse of what was once a named place, the indefinable horror of delimited horizons. It all shimmers in obstinate immovability. Footsteps, rubber soled shoe prints,
fossilised in silicate deposits.
A hot noon breeze rushes through the spikes of a cactus in a desert.
[Text: William Bogner & Kaius Owen]
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