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dralo
DRALO
2024
DRALO, 2024
Found Poem, Page 650, Sarat Chandra Das
Single Channel Video Installation
Inkjet Printer & Copier
Dimensions Variable
While searching for the source definition of the Tibetan word ‘dralo’, I came across the Sarat Chandra Das – a Tibetan- English dictionary in which words are given with their accepted Sanskrit equivalents and English meanings.
On page 650 of the Sarat Chandra Das, I did not find the word I was looking for. What I did find however, is presented in the above video installation as a found poem.
The original dictionary entry was printed, cut, arranged and scanned. It was then fed through a copier that created chance distortions in the text which had the effect of adding entirely random (almost responsive) emphasis to certain words and phrases in a way that could almost be mistaken for genuine intent. Led by the copiers chance additions and alterations, the video and sound edit was guided by a similarly generative (equally random) process to the effect that the resulting poem seemed to pull itself together, assembling its own body with the help of my hands.
A.S. Bessa, discussing the work of French poet Stéphan Mallarmé, in her book Vers: Une Architecture, says ‘The vers is an organising principle. It brings (metric) order and symmetry to the chaos of unelaborated ideas.’ I find this particularly interesting in the context of a found poem, or perhaps rather, a poem that finds itself.
Additionally, if the vers is the organising principle then the copier is the disorganising principle. It leans back into chaos and stretches and dissolves the newly articulated thought, underlining or undermining (or both) its economy and force, thereby doubling or perhaps squaring its intent, naming things we have not yet named.
DRALO, 2024
Found Poem, Page 650, Sarat Chandra Das
Single Channel Video Installation
STILLS
