22-3/4” x 23” x 23”
Mechanism for Seeing incorporates the text “I have a mechanism for seeing called eyes”, an excerpt of dialogue from Ferdinand, in Jean Luc Godard’s film, Pierrot le Fou. The form and structure of this work references the architect Peter Eisenman and his House X designs from the early 1970’s, where he opened up the language and system of architecture into linguistic elements. Eisenman used the term cardboard in describing these houses and is used to question the nature of the perception of reality and how meanings depict reality, is this a model or a building. He considered the deployment of columns, walls, and beams, as they define space in a series of thin planar, vertical layers. Space, for him, is not necessarily limited or defined by structure. He created an opposition between an actual relationship and an implied relationship using the columns and the wall, and the wall of the volume. Similarly, Godard opened up the structure of film with the use of voiceover, words, and other disjunctive texts and filmic devices that interrupt and supplement the narrative. Godard is questioning language’s relationship to knowledge, and where voice overs report that “language is the house that man lives in”. I am interested in the spatialization of language between sculpture, architecture, and film. The text refers to spoken word and speech, that is from a reading, and presented in the context of a film. The structure sets up a larger framework, or stage, that integrates the separated letters into a non-linear format.