Notes Towards Silence

“A Blank of the Visible Universe” is both a diagram and a non-linear poem. As a diagram, it borrows the language of mathematical certainty, geometric precision, and scientific reasoning to arrive at absurd and impossible conclusions.

At its center, a kinetic sculptural element takes the form of a Venn diagram built from moving clock parts. Each clock hand corresponds to a smaller category within the diagram, attempting to mathematically model the perfect overlap between self and other, source and receiver, artist and viewer. The resulting formula is a knotted, implausible, yet poetic linguistic construction.

Poetry also appears in the textual labels of circular diagrams interspersed with clock hands that track passing seconds. These poems unfold through multiple non-linear pathways, breaking the temporal rhythm of reading as the eye shifts from sequential text to the holistic simultaneity of an image.Yet, despite these diverging routes, the meaning remains the same: there is no escape from time.

In this work, time is both kept and lost through the clocks that populate the diagram. Their mechanisms mark synchronous time, each second discrete from the next, yet the installation offers no way to tell the hour or measure duration, creating an ever-expanding present.

Time also reappears through the idioms that attempt to define it. One of the graphs catalogs the often contrasting verbs often used in relation to time: find time, lose time, own time, free time, and so on. Yet despite language’s efforts to differentiate these states, time remains undivided and continuous.