2016
Book refers to the type of thesaurus dictionary. However, it denies its utilitarian purpose, which is to define words, explain them to make them intelligible. The starting point was the words meaning something indefinite, focused on the synonyms of the English word obscure (latin obscurus – something dark, from Indo-European roots associated with covering something).
As a result of moving from word to word, from synonym to synonym, from the initial lack of definition, overlapping groups of meanings have been clarified. I have grouped them into four main ones: vague, hidden, mist, dark. Finally synonyms for obscure began to have closer ties with the dying, pointing the real essence of the unknown – death. In this way, the dictionary was associated with the cemetery as a book, a text of culture, a metaphorical cemetery with gravestones as its charts. Language (synonyms of obscure, and at the same time words frequently used in english poems of romantic period) and imaging (tombstone portraits) are attempt to express death’s incomprehensible phenomenon. The individual words grouped in the dictionary and appearing in the poems was extracted, leaving the original location of them in the stanzas. Words taken out of context, still allow to read the atmosphere accompanying the poems, but at the same time leave a feeling of detachment, loneliness and disappearance. The poems are decomposed into words. The gradual disappearance of words and their disintegration, leads to ultimate silence.
art book, hardcover, embossing, ebru end-paper, edge dyeing
four loose intaglio print attached, 25 × 20,5 × 2 cm, edition of 3
As a result of moving from word to word, from synonym to synonym, from the initial lack of definition, overlapping groups of meanings have been clarified. I have grouped them into four main ones: vague, hidden, mist, dark. Finally synonyms for obscure began to have closer ties with the dying, pointing the real essence of the unknown – death. In this way, the dictionary was associated with the cemetery as a book, a text of culture, a metaphorical cemetery with gravestones as its charts. Language (synonyms of obscure, and at the same time words frequently used in english poems of romantic period) and imaging (tombstone portraits) are attempt to express death’s incomprehensible phenomenon. The individual words grouped in the dictionary and appearing in the poems was extracted, leaving the original location of them in the stanzas. Words taken out of context, still allow to read the atmosphere accompanying the poems, but at the same time leave a feeling of detachment, loneliness and disappearance. The poems are decomposed into words. The gradual disappearance of words and their disintegration, leads to ultimate silence.
art book, hardcover, embossing, ebru end-paper, edge dyeing
four loose intaglio print attached, 25 × 20,5 × 2 cm, edition of 3
Video documentation: https://archive.org/details/lena-achtelik-1-mini
