Susan Warner Keene - Basho #2

Reflections:
ReVisions

The work in this series imagines language transformed into artifact through the act of writing. Informed by aspects of calligraphy, papermaking, and the history of the book, these pieces explore the visual and material presence of written language when fused with its paper support.

Fragments of historical text have been redrawn with liquid paper pulp in cursive script in arrangements suggested by their content, which includes lines and phrases from the Japanese poet Bashõ, the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, the American poet Emily Dickinson, and the French writer Edmond Jabès. The behaviour of high-shrinkage pulp in conjunction with certain letter forms and their arrangement generates a new "translation" of the text.

This piece is a fragment of the final haiku written by the 17th century Japanese poet Bashō, re-inscribed using liquid paper pulp, so that text and surface are generated as one. The distortion that occurs in the drying process obscures reading, just as the translation from Japanese to English text is also, unavoidably, an imperfect rendering.

(The text fragment is from “Round, as yet round, my dreams keep revolving,” trans. Nobuyuki Yuasa 1966 )

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