All I See Are Lines
H.R. Buechler + Erica Hess
2016-2017
textile (Hess): 217” x 24”, monofilament weft, ikat cotton/linen warp
artists’ book (Buechler): cassette (side 0: 10 min. oration/origin; side 1: 10 min. morse/score); modified print-on demand (24 pgs.), letterpress sleeve; ed. 20
All I See Are Lines* is an interdisciplinary collaboration between H.R. Buechler and Erica Hess that explores the materiality of systems of transmission—language/code/textile—and the ineffectualness of these systems when subjected to repeated, reconfigured transmission/translation: corporeal, analogue, and digital in nature. In all the processes and systems utilized one finds an instance/instances of failure, of loss materialized in gain. The resulting pieces embody a sense of loss accumulated: absence and presence, the material and ephemeral, and a conversation between silence and noise. In their totality they are a meta-translation.
With AISAL, Buechler and Hess ask: What do we lose in translation? What is language, ultimately, reduced to? What is lost in each abstraction, reduction, transmission of the original form? Is this loss of material, meaning, weight, content, and context that occurs through each systematized translation not dissimilar to the fragmentary loss of of seemingly minute data in the continued reproduction of our everyday lives? What would happen if we were to capture the fragments, become conscious of their influence?
The installation of this work provides the contemplative space and structure to consider these occurrences in their totality.
*The title is a nod to the experimental poet, Hannah Weiner.
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For more information on Erica Hess please visit: Erica Hess . com
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AISAL audio score + book available for purchase, ($25) contact HR @ heather [@] hrbuechler [.] com