Lost Language : “Signifiant sans Signifie” : 2011

Franco-Cantabrian cave art, Hieroglyphics, Sumerian, Indus Valley, Linear A, Linear B, Phoenician, Etruscan, Greek, Runic. Thinking of the beginnings of the written, a variety of pictographs that even 10,000 years ago Joesph Campbell described as having a “vigorously fluent narrative.” Part of our tribal encyclopaedia. Ideographic, hieroglyphic, alphabetical, could they belong to a history of letter forms. Perhaps thoughts of signs on Chinese Oracle bones, writing and proto-writing, ancient forms of notation. Perhaps like our kinds first marks, mnemonic devices? Declarative but declaring what? “The universe of images is infinite, so new signs could always be added to the galaxy of hieroglyphics: ‘Ptolemaic’ writing managed to reach a total of more than 5000 signs. In this elasticity lay the practical inconvenience of hieroglyphic writing but also its poetic richness.” Before the Alphabet : Collection of Sand : Italo Calvino