Surface. Signal. Structure.
For much of the twentieth century the unfinished work carried a clear meaning. It indicated interruption. A novel left incomplete suggested the death of its author or the abandonment of an ambition that could not be disciplined into final form. An unfinished film implied financial collapse, exhaustion, or indecision. In every case the artifact appeared… Continue reading The Unfinished Artifact
For a long time we believed evil was primitive. That was the language people used when explaining acts that seemed to exceed ordinary cruelty. Violence was called animalistic. Greed was described as base instinct. Even when crimes appeared elaborate, the explanation usually moved backward in time: the offender had reverted to something older than civilization,… Continue reading The Demon with an Office
Administrative systems existed to organize work. The assumption seemed obvious. Offices required procedures. Institutions required documentation. Large organizations needed mechanisms capable of coordinating thousands of individuals who would never meet each other directly. Identification numbers, time clocks, compliance reports, and disciplinary notices appeared as practical tools designed to maintain order. They belonged to the technical… Continue reading The Administrative Universe
For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the modern individual believed himself to be the center of the story. He might have been mistaken, but the belief itself shaped the cultural imagination of the era. The artist, the hero, the rebel, the visionary, the tragic soul—each assumed that history unfolded around the drama of… Continue reading When the Ground Stops Being Neutral
There are unfinished works that remain unfinished because circumstances intervened. Time ran out. Health failed. Attention moved elsewhere. The work simply stopped. And then there are works that remain unfinished for a different reason. They attempted something structurally larger than the form that was meant to contain them. These works do not fail at the… Continue reading The Architect of the Labyrinth
“An image made this pale man pale. He was equal to his deed when he did it; but he could not bear its image after it was done.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra I While Dennis Flamingo was working, something had been growing inside him — not tumor, not fever, not any of the flamboyant… Continue reading The Pale Criminal
The New Poetics 