Can an image negate?
Premature suggestions for a meme: Me: That’s not an image. The image: You negate in the sentence. Me: And you? The image: Not me. Me: What is shown does not negate. The image: It appears. Negation belongs to grammar, not to perception. What is not shown is not part of the language in which I speak. An image cannot say not. It can only be. Me: But images don’t speak. The image is silent. The image: In my silence lies a supper full of answers. I step forward by withdrawing, I show by — Shut up Between your gaze and my appearance, the no arises — not as a decision. Negation does not reside in the object, but in the supposedness of the visible. Where did it say again that the image has no form? Can an image represent absence without simultaneously ‘presenting’ it? Can an image express contradiction, even though it can only show? Is non-representation already negation, or just a gap? Can an image say, ‘It’s not like that’ — or does it inevitably show, ‘It is like that’ (at least in the image)? Last Friday, I spent the day outdoors.
Design is an affirmative activity. Every statement — whether material or conceptual — stabilises a space of possibility by marking it. Even negation presents itself as a figure: withdrawal becomes a gesture, emptiness a semantic field, omission a trace of its own justification. Thus, negation unexpectedly becomes an affirmative act insofar as it enters non-being into the order of the visible. Negation does not function as a break, but as a diversion of attention; it shifts the centre without dissolving the edge. In visual articulation, the no always appears as another yes — a yes to its visibility, to its form, to its possibility within the structure of the design.
The highest affirmation is ultimately negation. That is why we do not create images. These letters are.
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
by Herman Melville
Title: Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street
Author: Herman Melville
Release Date: February 1, 2004 eBook #11231
Most Recently Updated: October 28, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Steve J. Nelson and Clara T. Nelson
Images: Nodding Gesture. Public Domain. Wikipedia
