Where to find a
'matter' articulable ad infinitum?
Any
materiality is likely, theoretically, to articulate significances.
Thus, differently modulated smoke can translate different
significances. Only with the smoke system the field of the possible is
very quickly exhausted. And if one tries to extend it, it quickly
becomes incredibly complicated. Thus, theoretically, a very great
amount of materiality would be necessary, the articulatory
possibilities of each one supplementing the limits of the other. The
complication would simply increase.
The
ideal would be a single materiality, indefinitely articulable, easy
to handle, the most immediately available, the
most immediately accessible. In short,
a materiality which functions with a maximum of economy. Where can
such a materiality be found?
What
about finding such a materiality in what man is himself, in his body?
And what, in the body, is articulable at will and always available?
Aren't these bodily expressions, manual gestures as well as facial
mimicry all immediately expressive of significances? But in this
immediacy lies still an immense obstacle. The significance is there
still too captive of the materiality with its individual
characteristics and, therefore, cannot yet be really open to an
indefinite signifying possibility. The sign remains prisoner of the
body characteristics with its sexual, racial, cultural varieties. It
remains too dependent on qualitative and emotional factors. Its
expressive possibilities remain limited. It misses relevant
difference and precision. It misses neutrality and availability. It
remains too slow, too cumbersome and too complicated. Lastly, and
especially, its combinative possibilities are negligible and
difficult. You cannot split it up in simpler elements able to be
combined for new meaning structures.
You
had to find in the heart of the mime and the gesture a less immediate
dimension able, in its abstraction, to keep a material autonomy.
Simple enough to be usable economically. Neutral enough to become an
universal and objective tool. Adjustable enough to be able to have precise meaning. Combinable enough to be able to create an indefinite
number of meaning signs.
Isn't such a possibility given in
this dimension of the gesture and the mime which is sonority? Not so
much the mime and the gesture as sounding but the sonority itself.
And more precisely the whole of sonorities the vocal apparatus can
emit. It is this materiality of the vocal sounds which the function of meaning will assume and articulate according to an incredible
richness. Speech.
Language. Living word.
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