There is no difference between marks and words in the sense that there is between observation and accepted authority, or between verifiable fact and tradition. The process is everywhere the same: that of the sign and its likeness, and this is why nature and the word can intertwine with one another to infinity, forming, for those who can read it, one vast single text” (From an early section of The Order of Things, addressing Classical forms of knowledge, Michel Foucault, pg. 38 Routledge press).
Notice the intertwining of marks and words in the two images here – the use of tradition and loss of verifiable fact or information – the loss occurring in two different ways, one due to a vast gap of history, the other due to an intentional abstraction of mark-making/writing – yet the two images forming a connection, or creating a glimpse at a unity beyond time, coherence and understanding becoming nonessential parts of a practice that continues to unfold itself into the future – the two pieces below are separated by over two thousand years:
Cuneiform tablet: account of textile deliveries for divinities, Ebabbar archive – 539 BC – Neo-Babylonian – Clay Tablet Inscribed
COLD STREAM ROME, 1966. / OIL BASED HOUSE PAINT AND WAX CRAYON ON CANVAS, 200 X 252 CM. – Cy Twombly
view from a burrow 