A verb in hand is worth two in your head
Robert Smithson believed that language is a concrete material. For his 1966 work A Heap of Language, he wrote on graph paper in cursive, an accumulation of words piled one upon another “turning thought into thing.”
One of my current preoccupations is incorporating language in the objects or installations I do. For a recent project for the new Arete’ building at the Ateneo, I installed hundreds of verbs laser cut out of individual steel plates on the steps of the building’s two wings.
Technical issues regarding the granite tiles that the plates were drilled into resulted in a substantial surplus of these words, which I am installing here at the Drawing Room. I set out to pay homage to Smithson by turning the superfluous into material; the edited into content; the thought into thing; to apply myself as, an artist has no choice but to, lest he wants to accrue a heap of unrealized ideas in his head.
Juan Alcazaren
In collaboration with
Arete; Ateneo de Manila University
