Figure 1: Mappa Del Mundo – Aligihiero e Boetti, 1989
Richard Maguire
How one speaks is often gauged through aspects of morality: specifically veritas (truthfulness), logic, sense and language’s capacity for intelligibility. Together they factor a notion in determining if one is speaking out of one’s head or ass. The premise of this essay is an analysis on select works of Alighiero e Boetti in relation to the form and function of: apophenia and its usage as a stratagem to find common-ground, glossolalia and its function of using difference as mechanism to find areas of similitude, and the scatalogical where if everything has meaning, as much as nothing has meaning, does it mean anything? Or is it all shit? To garner these results I shall utilise a critical interpretative analysis on the following works: Mappa Series (1971-1989); I Sei Sensi (1974-5) and Tutto (1987). Through which orifice does he speak? In the case of Boetti, he may be seen to speak through both mouth and anus.
The approach of Boetti and artists who devised similar strategies has often been cited in contemporaneity as the elitist reluctance to engage in active social discourse (Beech & Roberts, 2002: 297). However, I don’t believe this is accurate. The complexity in deciphering the conceptual tangencies of artists like Boetti is the manner in which it (their Logos) derives. Boetti’s conceptual framework rejects “enlightenment rationale” and its hierarchical models of values, favouring rhetorical tropes comprised of disparate sources: like Zen and Sufi philosophy as equal to that of classical European philosophy (Obrist, 2012). He rejects the models and framework of empiricism and rationalism and the innate prejudices that these ‘objective’ models avow (Smith, 2013). This positioning unlike that of his European modernist precursors doesn’t harken back to a colloquial or nationalised mythology, nor does it utilise the ‘other’ through the gaze of the coloniser. What medium specificity and the canonised practise of history painting and monument making presupposed in the modernistic legacy was utilising methodologies in which recognisable stances, archetypes, and pictorial conventions were recycled, for then an image had a conventional pictorial legibility or a determining reference point (Hasenmueller, 1978). Canonization, then gave works an absolute value. Boetti is different, value lies in the synonymity and collapsibility of language: pictorial and textual alike. The meaning of value then lies in where degrees of linguistic currency are eschewed instead of being easily consumable.
Glossolalia—speaking difference towards similitude
Beginning in 1971 the Mappa series was a continuous collaboration between Afghani women and Boetti until his death in 1994. The embroideries themselves exist in the tradition of oriental rugs with each Mappa produced traditionally by the women, by hand, with no interaction directly between either artist or artisan. They all consist of a flattened map of a globe but vary between embroidering techniques, colour and rendering. At large the issue remains of whom is speaking? Artist or artisan, what are they saying—what do they mean? Any intelligible language such as that on the work’s border is of the artisans: the women are perceived to have been vocalised. One would assume—perhaps naively—that their voices are pure, but in a culture in which women were inhibited academically their ability to render voice through text has to have been rendered by proxy. If narration within the works or the titles exist in the manner of stating outright that they are handcrafted by unnamed women who had fled from their native lands, or were made by Afghan people in Peshawar—meaning is not rendered alone by the insinuation of war, nor is it on the literal displacement of refugees post-political regime change. It is the interpolation of what a formal guise (a map) is that (logically) dictates what it is. If in this case ‘rationality’, ‘legibility,’ or ‘commonality’ is the reasoning whereby Western consumers know what the maps are, the Logos of veritas in representation as a matter of principle is then that they are read as such—they are what they are (Marder, 2016). But when maps are reduced to the most elemental symbolic meaning, i.e. their flags, they are reduced of their history and geographical basis. If meaning or rationalism is displaced (i.e. orienting one-self psychically or physically) they act then as the initial site in which disruption occurs.
Although Boetti himself would profess that he has done nothing, what renders meaning in the case of the Mappa series is the multiplicity of viewpoints (Boetti & Cooke, 2012: 167). Glossolalia is the terminology in which speech lacks readily comprehendible meaning, although classically this has not always been so. Glossolalia at one point had a collapsible/exchangeable meaning with ‘xenoglossy’ —a language unbeknownst to the speaker, but known to others as a credible tongue (Martin, 2009). If the vocalisation of an Afgani woman would be perceived as ‘nonsense’, one most allude to the fact it is deemed nonsensical because it privileges a viewpoint deemed as of low-value as opposed to of being of high import (Steryl, 2018).
If as Boetti stated he is doing nothing, and is speaking (as opposed to miming or imitating) the other without being; or disrupting the integrity their speech, he is talking in tongues. These formations (maps/western conventions) then become formulations for the glossolalic, in which convention is circumvented to become a mode of expression. Boetti then is seen to encompass the expression of the other, where Boetti’s namesake becomes an active site in which the other becomes a reified body or tongue.
Figure 1. (Alighiero e Boetti, 1989) is representative of this true suspension of traditional Logos, through restructuring Western models for knowledge dispensation for those contrary to the ‘other’, Mappa becomes the model in which the format condenses itself as a means in which the other then dispenses its voice. Those whom have been seen as ‘other’ are then equally imbued with value as the same to those whom have been previously privileged. It is thus in the formation of being embedded within a literal map one becomes the same as the other. If we can acknowledge that this phenomena can occur as real (or corporeal), we must also acknowledge sites in which traditional logic itself is suspended.
Apophenia: an area of common ground
As previously stated, Boetti’s interest in the functionality and linguistic capacity of symbols and signifiers and whether they are mutually intelligible—and when they are not, how do they hybridise? (Obrist, 2001). Hybridisation occurs often in a format in creating the appearance of a singular western voice and then imbuing it with the other, this hybridisation is glossolalic as it is Boetti who speaks in multiplicitous registers, using several pictorial/linguistic formations to speak in tongues, but then how is it a Logos to decipher and garner a linguistic element found?
Order and disorder is normally the way in which Boetti’s work is categorised, it presents a rationale in which the incoherent can be contextualised. Contextualisation then seeks to offer a means of finding meaning in what is seen to be incoherent. What I’m positing in this instance is that rather than offering actualised polarities in which the works exist, order/disorder poses a set of parameters in which the work exists between. This firmament of being ‘between’ in many aspects is the apophenic. To clarify this point I would suggest Boetti’s name as a case in point; Alighiero e Boetti. Although we read (universally) as the ‘e’ being an abbreviation of a middle name, this is incorrect. This addition to the name of Boetti serves to highlight the straddling between or inability to posture himself in a solid logical framework. Translated as literally Alighiero and Boetti from his native Italian, Boetti sought to remediate two polarities of both practice and person-hood as explained during an interview with Bruno Cora (Boetti & Cooke, 2012: 206). It is thus that the apophenic e is more significant rather than the conventional paradigms of the artist as being either Alighiero or Boetti.
For Boetti he referenced that the apophenic (between order and disorder) was to be utilised as an aesthetic principle, in that, engagement with works was to be seen similar to gameplay espousing that: everyone has the capacity to participate and that some are better than others (Boetti & Cooke, 2012: 25). Apophenia in Boetti’s practice is not garbled speech, nor is it the appearance of garbled speech. Apophenia serves as a methodological tool akin to a lingua franca, in which the contrasting paradigms of ‘I/you/we’ and ‘them’ become an image-based vocabulary in which the viewer finds meaning within the contents of the works. It is this that serves to function as a mediation ground for difference in which the capacity of a comprehensible Logos would progress to a Creolisation of paradigms. (Obrist, 2012)
An example of this would be evident in the piece I sei sensi / Figure 2. (Alighiero e Boetti, 1978) a series of large-scale biro drawings in varying shades, produced by both men and women of varying ages and socio-economic backgrounds (Boetti, 2001: 36). What we see here is a Latinised alphabet, strewn across the edge of the works—it is through the mutual intelligibility of language that both man and woman scrawl in a palimpsest fashion, issuing text as the common ground for interpretation. It is the forth-rightness of this language and its title I Sei Sensi /The Sixth Sense that offer this key.
Figure 2: I Sei Sensi, Alighiero e Boetti, 1978
The mediation of male and female lie within the sixth sense, if man and woman speak as one—the Latin alphabet acts as premise of ‘sameness’ this voice or (drawing) creates a tongue outwith the sexed body. If this tongue defies logic, or social categorisation; it is then best perhaps viewed as esoteric; in this case it can be viewed as part of the alchemical tradition of androgyny (Boetti, 2001: 76). If men have been classically seen as purveyors of thinking, and women of feeling—the nuance of marks and the manner in which they sit—oscillating in a liminal state, if as Francesco Clemente would suggest, the meeting of two binaries, one paper/tongue transmutes itself as the androgynous language, esoteric in its unification of two bodies (Graham, 2003: 201; Oren, 1995: 97). The presumption of this is that people will try and find an entering point in the bid to find meaning, an esoteric or hidden language (Boetti, 2001: 87). If it is the case that everything means something, what is one saying? Does it even mean anything?
The Scatalogic: Everything/Nothing. It sounds like shit.
When the apophenic in Boetti’s work is the common ground, everything has the potentiality to imply meaning. When it doesn’t, but could be interpreted as doing so, in Boetti’s game plan what does it mean? Is he speaking out his arse? Is it all shit? The prefix of scat- refers to the ancient Greek word for dung/manure, the scatalogical then implies not just a study of faeces but through logos—the logic of shit. Wherein the term itself exclusively designates the archaic to the arena of academia, in the case of the scat prefix being used in a comprehensible or vernacular context the most accessible example is scat music. Brittanica refers to this as a: ‘vocal style using emotive, onomatopoeic, and nonsense syllables instead of words’ (Britannica, 2018).
Scat/Faeces in this case becomes synonymous with NON-SENSE, in essence the physiological principle that head is to brain as anus is to refuse. In referencing previous articulations, I have addressed this issue but wish to extrapolate further by stating that: Boetti’s oeuvre posits a stratagem in which: text is replaced with picture or image with text; an intelligent substitution of an intelligible tongue, where, occassionally; language is chewed, but not fully digested. As they follow along a proverbial digestive tract they become imbalanced and as they lose or gain meaning images and text blurs with pictorial and textual homonyms and homographs.
This is evident in the Figure 3. (Alighiero e Boetti, 1988)—an embroidered tapestry, consisting of a solitary singular abstract plain. This plain is readily akin or interpreted as something like abstract painting. Tutto translates literally as everything, composed of the remnants of past and future works, everything maintains the integrity of their pictorial border, but their forms collapse into nothing: Tutto compounds all with meaning to a zero sum.
Figure 3: Alighiero e Boetti, Tutto, 1988
It is in this matter/manner that everything and nothing gains meaning, and equally it all falls apart. IT then is everything and nothing. If the logic of tongues is present within Mappa del Mundo, Tutto is the logic of the rear end. Everything is musical, perhaps more lewdly related to farting or shitting. Whilst the semblance of figuration or object recognition is eventually recognisable—as their condensation with colour into a solitary abstract plain—when looking at works such as Tutto, this eventual collapse is perhaps best allegorised to the recognition of food remnants in faecal matter.
A criticism of this functionality is that noises deriving from the anus are at least poor. For Deleuze (1990: 190-191) the scatalogic was not like that of the polyphonic (as in the case with the Mappa series) but that its (scatalogic’s) inability to even distinguish a voice rendered it schizophrenic . If the apophenic served to function as a means to decipher, language needs to have an ellipsis in which it seeks time to synthesise speech. It perhaps serves to function in a traditional interpretation of glossolalia in that: the lack of logical sequence or formation mimics the performative aspect of language:
it allows language to exist out of time. To the speaker of tongues, temporality becomes eternity, because there is no logical progression, but also because every moment is an existential beginning. (Csordas, 1990: 28)
Thus, if previous methodologies employed orthodox strategies to deposit or render meaning are now suspended, it is because for the speaker, the glossolalic as positioned by Csordas presents a langue where there is no discernible beginning as there is no end.
What I am ultimately suggesting is one whom talks in ‘traditional tongues’, there is no beginning—as there is no end, so within this logic of the divine, a gravitas of any discernable reason – language in this case, is haemoreged like verbal/pictoral diarrhoea. If language has previously served to function as a means to an end, Tutto is an ellipsis in which it mimics or mimes the notion of speech of the aforementioned works. Acting as a mechanism in which perhaps a true tongue dispenses a codex/index in a flatulent nature to dispense an alphabet as opposed to a decoy or cypher. Eternity then is seen to prevent furthering slippage of meaning but also act as the body in which meaning is generated from.
A CONCLUSION
Deleuze posited that what renders the noise of speech different from that of eating is superficial (Deleuze, 1990: 28). It fails to account for eating whilst speaking, talking and shitting or acts where noises disallow intelligible gestures. If one takes a conservative stance, Boetti could be talking out his ass, although I myself would disagree. One must distinguish in either case if there is meaning or at least intent. I have argued that through three different lexicons Boetti uses strategy in an attempt to transfix meaning onto language. However, if one was to disagree that either articulations of apophenia, glossolalia or the scatalogic were successful in their attempts to do so—if Boetti’s speech becomes incoherent or inarticulate it is determined as such through linguistic and conceptual apparatuses. If socio-cultural inadequacies are responsible for the lack of clarity in deciphering works, the responsibility there lies with the listener/viewer. Whether this sympathy for the orator (artist) is misplaced, it determines though that s/he is not purely speaking out of their ass, or at least that the speaking is potentially in unison with another ‘bodily’ act. If a means of garnering a language or system for deciphering a Logos is positioned akin to the a language of shit, would one say Boetti speaks out his arse? I would argue, no.
In closing, does the form of the apophenic obfuscate the objective entirely? Does the glossolalic truly speak difference towards similitude? Lastly, does/can the scatalogical and its proximity to orthodox interpretations of the glossolalic and its proximity to farting render its function obsolete? Of all three questions, I believe that the glossolalic and apophenic act well and according to their position—in regards to the scatalogical I don’t believe that its function is obsolete—neither do I truly think Boetti speaks out his ass. However, whilst I may not necessarily agree with this sentiment, I’m open towards the interpretation that it may (be shit); and in these cases he may be seen to speak not just shitily but excrement. This positioning, I can concede, would lend itself to the conclusion of that Boetti could be seen to speak out of both orifices of mouth and anus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beech, D. & Roberts, J. (2002). The Philistine controversy. London: Verso.
Boetti, A. (2001). Alighiero e Boetti. New York, N.Y.: Gagosian Gallery.
Boetti, A. & Cooke, L. (2012). Alghiero Boetti. London: Tate Pub.
Britannica (2018). Scat singing. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/scat-music%5BAccessed 9 Apr. 2018].
Csordas, T. (1990). Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos, 18(1), p.28.
Deleuze, G. (1990) Logic of sense, Boundas, C. (ed.), Lester, M. & Stivale, C. (trans.), Columbia University Press.
Graham, F. (2003). Duchamp & androgyny. Berkeley, Calif.: No-Thing Press.
Hasenmueller, C. (1978). Critical Interpretation. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 36(3), p.290.
Marder, E. (2016). The Perverse tongue of Psychoanalysis. European Graduate School. Available at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mQITGywtCI].
Martin, D. (2009). New Testament: an Introduction to History and Literature. Lecture 15: Paul as Pastor. Yale University. Available at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMVatCd_1xM].
Obrist, H. (2012). One of the most important days in my life. [online] Tate.org.uk. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/one-most-important-days-my-life [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
Oren, M. (1995). Worlds Envisioned: Alighiero e Boetti and Frédéric Bruly Bouabré. Third Text, 9(33), pp.95-97.
Smith, J. (2013). The Enlightenment’s ‘Race’ Problem, and Ours. [Blog] The Opinionator, New York Times. Available at: https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/ [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
Steryl, H. (2018). A Sea of Data: Apophenia & Pattern (Mis)Recognition. E-Flux, [online] 73(73). Available at: http://www.e-flux.com/journal/72/60480/a-sea-of-data-apophenia-and-pattern-mis-recognition/ [Accessed 3 Apr. 2018].
LIST OF FIGURES:
Figure 1: Boetti, A. 1988, Mappa Del Mundo, tapestry, Monsoon Art Collection, viewed: 20 April 2018, <http://monsoonartcollection.com/alighiero-boetti/>
Figure 2: Boetti, A. 1978, I Sei Sensi, biro on paper mounted on board, Fundació Suñol, viewed: 20 April 2018, <http://www.fundaciosunol.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/italia-ip.jpg>
Figure 3: Boetti, A. 1988, Tutto, tapestry, Christies, viewed: 20 April 2018, <https://www.christies.com/img/lotimages/2011/CKS/2011_cks_07992_0073_000(alighiero_boetti_tutto).jpg>
New Minds Eye 
