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A Cirque of Sites
Fabulations on Time, Work and Desire
Article / January 2019
for complete article contact martine@online.nl.
"It all started with the effort of trying to re-write these lines, so they might be suitable for a zero-dimensional space – befitting virtual reality, so to speak:
"Even on discolored paper, all that land still bore the unmistakable stamp of the wild, for it was intersected with a cirque of mountains so large that in the back there were still more desolate bastions, where secret things were waiting to be explored. What kind of things, then, you wonder. But of course I did not know."
My effort of re-writing ran amok (I was about to say: ‘hit the cliffs’) on the language of virtual space. There was no such language, no language of zero-dimensional space, no language of an ongoing, never-ending, digital realm. In an effort to get some grip on the matter, I (again) slid of into the ‘realms of the metaphor’. The next sentence was already waiting in line: ‘Virtual space was just as hard to imagine as the infinity of outerspace and the mind boggling idea of its expansion.’ Analogies as these were always stemming from known language, with a base in some old reputed imagery. Transferring meaning from these time-bound tropes to this terrain vague is dubious and probably limiting. I could off course do it like this:
“Even on a discolored screen, all that virtual space still bore the unmistakable stamp of the unsearched, for it was intersected with a cirque of sites so large that in the back there were still more desolate algorithms where secret concepts were waiting to be explored. What kind of concepts, then, you wonder. But off course I did not know that.”
A lovely and poetic effort, sure. But in spirit still quite… retro."