Robert Pfaller

Imagine a whole sentence, or even a poem, composed of only one and the same signifier or its equivalents. An inscription on an old Vienna shop window, advertising for maps and globes, once gave me a showcase example for such a "modular poem." It said: "world star planet earth" ("Weltstar Planet Erde"). Four equivalent elements, put together in a row that made up a sentence – just like the three Slovene artists that, by taking on the name of another man, started existing in a row now built of four equivalent elements. In my contribution, I want to examine the profound aesthetic pleasure that arises once equivalence is turned into contiguity: when the Saussurean "axes" of language appear to become the same, it is as if a certain tiresome "gravity" of speaking had been overcome: a joyful triumph, just as if in the social world the boring division of identities, properties, belongings and so on had been suspended and all men had become brothers.

What's in a Name?

Symposium

10 January 2018, Ljubljana

For more information: http://www.mg-lj.si/en/events/2201/symposium-what’s-in-a-name/