The starting point of the exhibition is the word ‘text’, derived from the Latin texere, meaning ‘to weave’, and which shares its origin with the word ‘textile’. This exhibition explores the tension between two seemingly opposing forms of knowledge: the ‘formal’ – written, systematized, patentable, and mediated by technology – and the ‘informal’ – ephemeral, embodied, alive, and unarchived.
Texting questions this contradiction and the underlying systems of meaning-making on which we rely, without acknowledging that these systems are constructed.
Through the work of the participating artists, Texting investigates who constructs text, what is archived, and whose labor and language disappear in that process.