TexT - JOHNCOURTNOW

Write Knowing: On John Court May 1st, 2017 by Nathan Walker

I am delighted to have a short text on the language-centred performance actions of John Court published in 'an idea of performance a idea of art: By John Court' (Frame Contemporary Art, Finland 2017). This large volume contains Courts drawings, notes, sketches and ideas for performance from his notebooks over a period of five years. Other contributing authors include Márcio Carvalho, Phil Sawdon, Sandra Johnston, Victoria Gray, Jonas Stampe, Yingmei Duan, Deborah Harty, Louise Clarke, Shannon Cochrane and Dider Morelli.

Court's performances are incredible encounters that occur over extended-durations. The image below is from his most recent performance in York (November 2017) organised by Victoria Gray and myself as part of Oui Performance series of events entitled 'Solo Site'.

Below is an excerpt from my text on Court's work in relation to his use of language and writing in performance. I read Court’s instruction ‘write KNOWING’ as a statement of practice. Court is able to understand the ideas, presented in this volume, only through the performance. That is, only when these ideas are explored over an extended durational performance do they become known. Court creates situations where ‘knowing’ can become present over time, he writes this here as:

>Performance Idea (Meaning) = Performance Being (Knowing)

In performance art we construct a situation where we can spend time with our ideas in order to fully know and understand them. For Court these materials and ideas are language-centred and build on a complicated relationship between his own literary and linguistic history. We see this in his performance ideas that appropriate literary objects like books and what we might call ‘writing-objects’ like school desks, marker pens, paper, and through the acts of speaking and writing as performance tasks.

In performance art we construct situations that are often difficult. We see this difficulty in Court’s ideas that encompass physical exhaustion, temporal endurance, and extreme repetition. The performance obstacle for Court is often language-centred and can be seen in the following (small) selection of scores for performance from this volume:

- white floor // write on the floor with white chalk
-Touch Book - Kick a Book around / Kick around dictionary
- Books covered with tape
- texts on feet
- Paper Writing - Chew - Spit in Corner
- Object in mouth and try to move or talk at same time
- Talking and Writing
- spit from mouth to glass
- making sound, shout, scream
- move against the wall use sound word to develop the space
- with right hand write on left hand
- lying on floor start writing words as you turn a rotation
- walking around in a circle when walking write on top half of body
- rip up a book then throw it on the floor
- eat a book and spit out wet paper
- walk around chair and write on body
- write a word underwater

When Court writes ‘Object in mouth and try to move or talk at the same time’, the performance task is purposefully made difficult: there is no direct path from performance idea to performance being. These ideas are indirect paths towards understanding. By appropriating the mouth and ear as spaces in which to hold and carry objects in performance his mouth / ear become physically linguistic. Instead of performing their function as emitting and receiving sound they become linguistic limbs, to hold and move objects as if they were language. As Court notes his practice uses ‘object[s] as a written language’, an indication of his exploration of words and writing as fundamental to his practice.

Nathan Walker website

An idea of performance a idea of art, by John Court
ISBN 97vw52-93-8547-8.

SHIFTS/ INVESTIGATING SCORES IN PERFORMANCE ART PERFORMANCE AND EXHIBITION

Curated by Katie Lee Dunbar and Anaïs Héraud as part of Month of the Performance Art Anthology 2015

interview #2: John Court

Finland based, London born artist John Court. Court’s performances have captivated audiences worldwide at events such as 7a*11d in Toronto, Canada and DigitaLive Guangzhou China (2014) SpaceX Gallery Exeter in UK (2012) Guangzhou Live Art Festival in China, ANTI Contemporary Art Festival in Finland (both 2010), the Venice Bien- nale (2005) and the Liverpool Biennial (2004). http://www.johncourtnow.com/

For one and a half hours John Court performed the same procedure over and over again. After hanging a numbered sheet of paper on the wall he proceeded to mark off the numbers with a black marker. After each mark he walked to a chair to step up and over it before walking back to the paper to mark the next number. There was a deep voice coming from his pocket that counted in a slow drone. John performed this action until the task was completed and all of the numbers were marked off the sheet. I had the chance afterwards to ask him about his work.

Johanna: Because your score was so tight, I kept trying to find places of change or inconsistency–shifts within the pattern as it repeated. My attention was drawn to the details such as the place the pen hit the paper each time or how many steps you took from the paper to the chair. The most significant thing that I noticed changing over the course of the hour and a half, aside from the movement of the chair, was your physical state–the increase in your breath, the shift in your walk, your sweat etc. Would you be able to describe to me one or more of the states that you went through during the duration of the performance?

John: A lot of the performances I do are about being in the moment, but also kind of pulling up selective memories. It is quite literal what I did; it is very much about learning. But its not about what I did it, it's about why I did it. For me its all about being in that moment. What you said is really nice because thats what I go for. Every step is a different step. Every hit is a different hit. There are no two times the same. I supposedI am trying to understand the world physically. I am quite lucky to be able to be in this situation where I am able to do that through performance. The visual elements are not so important, it is about the action. I didn't spend very much time in a classroom as a kid. I was always sent outside the classroom because I was always distracted. So for me learning through physicality was quite important. I didn't realize what was going to happen. I thought I would just step up and mark it, step up, and mark it...but then the chair started moving. I set up a really simple situation but it always changes in every performance. So I just keep myself open for that.

Jo: So one of the states that you enter in the performance is an experience of memory?

John: Yeah, I would say yes, but its not just that. I'm 45 so I have different experiences of different things. I just pull up selective memories. They are mainly memories of learning or of school experiences. I learned to read and write through making art. I kind of approach my work as a kind of learning. Or maybe its more like coping with life, coping with a situation that has happened. Then you have the spatial elements as well, the physicality of the space. I didn't plan it but it was logic that that chair went over to that corner because I was moving in a clockwise direction. If I would have gone anti-clockwise then I would have pulled back time. My goal to be present, to be there then, is not going backwards. It is going forwards. Of course you can't help the memory from pulling up experiences. Even in the hand or the chest, an experience can come. I question repetition. What I do is never repetition. Its never the same. Always this moment is this moment, that moment is that moment. I could do that all my life, its fine. It's not what I do, its why I do it. You see it once and then you don't have to see it again if you don't want to. But the people were kind of there in this performance. It was a really nice audience. I could give and get from them. I don't look at them but there is an energy, there is a presence in them as well as me. From the child running around to someone sitting there for an hour... I could feel them. Mainly energy...I'm not looking socially. I am not thinking socially. Its just creative being.

Jo: It's interesting that you mention repetition because I was thinking, it seems that repetition is a tool that you use a lot in your work. Is that true?

John: I question repetition because it is different every time. I could have quite easily fallen off the chair...something could easily have happened, but its like my mind and my body become one. I know what I'm doing. Even with the kid around. I can read his energy. I don't have to look. My mind and body kind of become one. It's difficult to explain. There are no words really, I don't think. I hope you kind of pick up on the energy that I am giving and the different states. Because sometimes I'm really angry, sometimes I'm really lost. But I'm not planning to do that. It happens. Maybe what I do could be seen as repetition, but the state that I am in is never the same.

Jo: That's a really nice way to bring it back because the title of this whole exhibition has to do with scores. So to me what you did looked like a very clear score, whether or not it was the same over and over again you do go to the paper, cross off the numbers, go to the chair, step over it, and go back to the paper over and over...

John: I don't understand “score”. They talked about Fluxus and all that, I don't know anything about Fluxus, but I have done a lot of things where I have produced some kind of image from a performance, like hour long text work that build up over the performance...they become beautiful artwork. And I've done stuff where I've had the idea, I've had the performance, and I've had the documentation. This one was different. I clearly wanted the pre- documentation to be the artwork. It was quite simple. I was just crossing off numbers. I didn't know whether I could finish because the time scale was a lot quicker than I wanted it to be but I just knew that I would be going really fast. The next one I do will be an 8 hour piece so I am curious to go back to that because the energy cannot be the same. At the moment, all I can think about is, What have I done? Why have I done it? This is what I do, I just open up to ideas and I just try to understand what I've done. In a way its like a shock. I don't know why it happens and how it happens. Is the paper an artwork now? I don't know. That thing is not a nice thing now. There is a lot of stuff inside it.

Jo: Thank you so much.
John: Thank you.
-interviewed by Johanna Gilje

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:“Some scores* might be the core of the performance, others are the remaining traces. Sometimes they are material for improvisation. Scores can remain private and help to reach a certain state for the live act, others might be artwork in them-selves. Where does script end and the artwork begin? What is the shift from concept to performance?

We invite performance artists: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, John Court, Katie Lee Dunbar, Camilla Graff Junior, Leena Kela, Anaïs Héraud & Till Baumann; all of whom have developed a practice of score writing. Throughout the 19th of May the seven artists will share their methods and enter a dialog; showing visual, textual and audio scores as well as the relevant performances. *Event scores - instructions for a performance. Widely known as a result of the Fluxus movement.”-from the curators

John Court: Teetering on the Brink by Didier Morelli

6 hours performance Untitled in 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, Toronto, Canada on Thursday 30 October 2014 4pm to 10pm.

A classroom desk—adapted so that one of its legs extends far beyond the others.   Completely wrapped up in hockey tape. A small pile of magnesium at the center of the room. The clock overlooking the room echoing your repetitive and somewhat senseless gesture. The chalkboard, that you cover up with illegible letters of the alphabet as you rotate. Rotation. Clockwork. Moving in circles, rotating over a single point, forward pull, inertia, and the adapted desk held up by your mouth. The sores forming themselves along your lips where you hold the desk up. Your neck, slowly becoming locked in place. You continue to rotate, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. I can’t quite make sense of it all—but I am drawn in by your commitment. Reliable. Resilient. Relentless. Revolving. I return over and over again to accompany you in this interminable action…

When I first heard of Court’s work, I thought that his performances might run the risk of becoming acts of heroism, potentially overwhelmed by their focus on the   accomplishment of a taxing physical feat. As I sat in his six-hour performance at 7a11d* International Festival of Performance Art in Toronto (Ontario) last fall, I was moved by the generosity and humbleness of his work. Focusing on his task, Court’s clockwise rotation in a rehabilitated classroom became a point of convergence for the festival’s community to sit down and appreciate his body at work. Intent in his action—a task to be executed and done exactly—Court created a strong bond between himself and the audience in his sincerity and in his generous sharing of this gesture with us. The rotating body became both soothingly meditative and difficult to bear.

The door is open. You give us all a chance to walk in and out of the room—to either   spend time observing you or leave. It becomes difficult to do either of these things. The luxury of coming in and out—of passing through with such ease—is in direct opposition with your repetitive task. You are trapped in this Beckett tragicomedy you have set up for yourself. I can go when I please.

Like an athlete in training or a butcher sharpening his knives John approaches his actions with the utmost respect and passion. While these performances can seem like tasks to be accomplished, events to be worked through, they are also careful articulations of a politic, of his interests in language, art, aesthetics, and his craft as a maker. He focuses on minute details, which can often go unnoticed. It is important to sit down after one of his performances and take note of the traces left behind: the small piles of magnesium, burnt wood, chalk, and stone, or   the traces of written text, feet, hands, and finger prints that continue to live on in the space. John’s body is in constant motion throughout his performances—although sometimes the movement is difficult to discern because of its minuteness. This   kinaesthetic quality of the work is important since it produces the conditions for new objects, sculptures, sites, and temporal spaces.

You finish and we all applaud you. But the applause feel completely wrong and misplaced. You are tired, dehydrated, disoriented, sore. You probably want to be left   alone. And so in response we applaud. Loudly. To drown out the silence. The classroom now bears your trace, and long after you have left—long after the magnesium has   been swept away and the chalkboard erased—people will continue to see you revolving there. Like a satellite in orbit, held in balance by the careful pull and push of   centrifugal forces. Teetering on the brink of disaster.

Perhaps what best describes John Court is himself. Often performing in black plain clothes and a pair of comfortable black sneakers, with a shaved head and a   focused look in his eyes, John Court performs no one other than himself. He is often stoic in his work, and this achieves a consistency that makes him unique. Attending a performance by Court leaves you with the feeling that you have seen many others by him. It also makes you want to attend every single one that will follow. The magnitude of each performance combined with the attention to detail make them all events on their own—singular and special, particular and interesting, peculiar and intriguing. While the actions are never necessarily overtly big, loud, or invasive, they manage to reach far beyond themselves and become landmarks on their   own—collapsing experience and existence by carving out the surface of our communal time and space. The energy of an environment, of an evening, of a festival   will change once John has performed—his presence alone a considerable force.

Didier Morelli is presently a PhD student in Performance Studies at Northwestern University. As an interdisciplinary artist, Morelli combines practice and research in both his academic and performative explorations. His live art practice includes endurance-based durational actions and contextually specific relational interactions.

The Work Between The Lines

29 September–24 November 2012 Spacex Gallery Exeter, UK

Reviewed by: Mark Leahy »

Opening event including John Court in conversation with André Stitt Saturday 29 September 2012, 3–5pm

This is a quiet exhibition. There is stillness, silence, there are calm objects … and then I become aware of a sound, at first like a bird cheeping, a squeak …. When I come into room on the left, and see the monitors I realise this is the sound of a felt-tip on board, the squeak of the marker as letters are formed, as lines are inscribed to build up into words, into a statement, and as continuing they obscure those marks already made. John Court’s work is quiet, and yet it is insistent, and determined. The stillness is an effect of concentration and focus, so it is less the still surface of a quiet lake, and more the taut surface of liquid in tension.

In many ways this show feels to be about materials. Not an Arte Povera presenting of chunks of stuff, or an neo-expressionist piling up of clashing things, but the paper and panels and graphite and pencil and glue and marker-pen and blocks have a quality of being themselves. Here are materials pushed about or pressed or moved by the artist. This in part may be due to an absence of images, or of the pictorial, of things represented or depicted in the work, so our attention is on what is here rather than what is shown.

To coincide with the exhibition opening Spacex arranged a conversation between John Court and the artist André Stitt. This took place in the gallery, with the work, and allowed Court to point to specific drawings or objects, and encouraged the audience to question him directly on aspects of his practice. Stitt addressed Court’s dyslexia and its impact on the work, and also raised questions around a wider understanding of ‘drawing’, and suggested links to Merleau-Ponty and phenomenology. This direction in the conversation might seem a move away from my sense of a concern with materials and materiality, but the abstract and the conceptual are grounded in  the physical and the bodily for John Court.

As Court and Stitt conversed, it became apparent that ‘drawing’ was a physical activity, and that the line resulting from the action of drawing was a bodily trace. The line is the trace of the drawer, and drawing extends to include the drawing of breath, and the drawing of sound or sustenance into the body. The body thus is connected, is extended out into its environment and the environment extends into the body. The line traces this arena of intersection, the action of marking or of making occurs in this body / world crossing.

The activity involved in making Court’s stencilled shaded glued and painted panels is of such extended laborious duration that  engagement with this process, this task of making, almost displaces all other attention. A viewer comes before the pale square surfaces with their irregular lumps or bumps and imagines the time and effort, and perhaps boredom, involved in bringing them to be. In focusing on this slow tedious action I forget to see the thing in front of me, this panel, that is not an image, not a representation of some scene or entity, but a record of work done, a document of careful precise slow extended attention to making.

In the pencil drawings there is again a sense of the time taken and of the laborious, of the tedious or boring action involved as letter forms are placed and traced and linked and the ground between is filled with spaghetti or noodle forms. For Court, who states that he sees the forms of words rather than the significance of letters, the experience of printed text may be closer to seeing such wiring, or shredded paper, or noodles. An apprehension of text as a patterned field, as a surface distributed with regular marks precedes or overlays any reading of the marks and shapes as letters. This does not mean that the patterned surface is without meaning, as pasta or knitting wool has meaning and needs to be recognised when the question is whether or not to eat it. The distinction is not between a perception that does not recognise there is meaning in what is seen, but that does not recognise that the meaning is deferred, is transposed in some way. What is present here is the drawing, the presentation of the form of words, words that frustrate attempts at conventional reading. I can tell there are words here, and can hazard guesses at some of them, but I cannot resolve them into a narrative, or cannot get the strings to join up, to make sense. So, I return to the pattern and texture and recognise that the repetitive drawing action may be a (calming) response to the frustration of not getting it, of being closed out by (the) text.

This viewer’s activity of deciphering a resistant surface may parallel or exist in an equivalence to the resistance Court faces with everyday printed words. The works are presented, are proposed as a response to and a reflection of the closing out of the non-reader from the world of reading. That closing out can operate in other areas also, can relate to other boundaries that are policed by codes or shibboleths, with the artist's statement functioning as one of these. For Court, the rise in importance of the artist statement as passport to a particular contemporary artworld, serves to displace the attention of viewers from the work to the words about or around the work. The requirement to produce, to present a statement in order for the work to be taken seriously, can act as a barrier to entry for artists who cannot, do not, or will not produce this text. Making the text the test of value, the measure of worth, avoids the difficulty of assessing the work, side-steps the problem of aesthetic judgement, and places the problem within an academic context, a context of interpreting a textual artefact, a task which is more explicitly codified.

Court's response is to generate an excess of statement, to multiply the elements of the text, to distribute these in endless repetition of the units from which the text is composed. By this action the text is made incomprehensible, made illegible, or made opaque. If the intention of the artist statement is to offer an access onto the work, a translucent screen between audience and artwork, then Court's expansion and dispersal of the statement blocks this, returns us to the work, interposes the work between us and the text again.

Court again offers an excess of information in the layered video documentation of his writing actions. A build-up of data and of gesture creates an opaque centre where the viewer is aware of activity, of repetition, of a body involved in marking, but where the excess of marking results in an abstraction. Event time is overlaid, resulting in a veiling of particular marks, letters or words, and presenting the audience with the information that writing has taken place, but not access to what those marks might read as.

In other action documentation, Court presents the viewer with an apparently simple pared-down action, or activity. Here there may seem to be less to interpret, less to read, and so less that is or can be obscured, yet in their openness, in their lack of information, and with their excessive or extended duration, the audience is pushed to fill in, to ascribe motive, to suggest intention, to imagine. I see Court standing,or sitting, or lying, for hours, and imagine narratives to account for this, imagine the physical experience of extended stillness, of discomfort, of boredom. And in imagining this I am writing my imagined (empathetic) experience onto the still body. The
time I am given in which to do this fills up with my thoughts, my questions, my story, and the apparently emptied action is overlaid with layers of words.

In response to a question about the influence of the Finnish landscape, Court replied, “it teaches you to be patient, to accept being there longer”. The works here may have an equivalent effect on the visitors to Court‘s exhibition. They repay time and attention, and offer access to another way of being with language. In the eight-hour performance planned as a closing event for the show (Saturday 24th November), the audience will have an opportunity to experience the live elements of Court’s practice, and the challenge to be patient, to remain there longer.

The Institutionalization of the Doodle

It took many years to work out that this whole drawing process began at school, when I picked up my pencil to copy down the written words on the blackboard, most of which I could not understand. It was easier to doodle than to write a word, and in a working sense, my drawings have institutionalized the doodle as a diagrammatic art form.

That negative encounter with learning set off a need to make sense of the world through the active manipulation of the pencil line as drawing. It is therefore more meaningful to me to make a drawing, and understand its contents, than to copy down a word, and be totally perplexed by its structure and meaning.

The act of drawing connects the physicality of learning to the engagement with ideas. This is why I use the freehand drawing method as a simple way of connecting the action to the mind. The physical experience is transmitted in three different ways; it comes from the inseparable build up of words in the work, by the layering of glue which disrupts the surface, and from the blurring effect on the surface caused by reflections of light on the aluminium leaf.

An important element of the work is in the work ethic, the idea that a work requires time and effort as part of the creative process. The mass of time spent within that space creates a drawing which hangs motionless in space like the mental block I experience when reading and writing.

From a distance, my drawings give the appearance of being manufactured by a mechanical reproductive process; they posit a state of neutrality, a sense of motionlessness, and for some viewers they are totally impenetrable, but people are often surprised by their ‘actuality’ – of very basic art materials such as hand drawn pencil (graphite) and aluminium leaf on paper. In one sense there is something in that moment when a viewer feels the frustration of not understanding. It means that the work’s actuality exists outside the conceptual framework that created it, that we should consider the moment of actuality in the viewing of a work.

By Steve Pratt November 2007

MIRRORING DYSLEXIA The power relations of language

The drawings of John Court (2006-2007) By Steve Pratt

"Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation" Angela Carter.

If it is true that art 'movements' are continuously shown to be reactions to events outside their sphere of influence, then it is my contention in this essay that John Court's drawings can be seen as a reaction against the institutionalised centrality of language per se - in particular conceptual art's shift of
emphasis from a merely visual (passive) activity to a more cognitive (active) process of READING a work of art (1). Some would argue that those two activities are one and the same by the nature of their linguistic explanation, but it's also reasonable to assume that it is not the same for everyone due to the differing array of specific learning situations.

My point here is that conceptual art's preoccupation with the specification and meaning of a work through the use of language devices - even though those devices are a parody of themselves are no less problematic. Sociolinguist Mary Louise Pratt, identifies parody as one of the "arts of the contact zone," through which marginalized or oppressed groups "selectively appropriate," or imitate and take over, aspects of more empowered cultures (2).

Marginalised groups on the periphery of learning, such as adult immigrants, and the disabled come immediately to mind.   Language operates within a framework of political and economic power (3) and within its parameters are the power relations to enable or disable learning.

Mainstream Conceptual art presents us with statements (Lawrence Weiner, John Baldessari, Art and Language et al); written instructions (Le Wit et al); definitions (Joseph Kosuth et al); documentation (Dan Graham et al) and the iconic use of language itself (Jenny Holzer et al) (4).

John Court's work reaches deeper into the post-modern psyche to reveal a flaw in the make up of language itself; by presenting the viewer with a physical deconstruction of the symbolic structure of language he reveals the disempowerment of being without a recognisable language. It is not just the destabilisation of meaning but a threat to our very existence. Without language we cannot survive socially, politically or economically. This absence reveals the power relations of language and highlights the need for an equality of language learning - not just in reading but in speaking and learning for all. The visual experience of how we come to understand the world is quite distinct from the verbalised attempts to impose authority and meaning by those in power.

"When I see a word in a text my first reaction is to feel uncomfortable"

John Court left school, unable to read or write, and yet at the age of 28 he graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design with the highest mark in visual representation for his year. A remarkable journey in which he had to create a system (5) of learning in order to cope with the more text based educational demands of the educational institutions.

"Being dyslexic, I don't make much sense of the world (as a text), but when I go into my studio and engage with these drawings - I feel everything comes together again; and for the impassive viewer they should impart an energy that adds to the space they occupy."

"Text worries me on two fronts:
Firstly, we are so judged by the art statements we make
And
Secondly, those words (in their textual form) have made little sense to me."

The importance of the 'Art Statement' John Court's drawing practice began in 1997 whilst studying at Norwich School or Art and Design. The 2006-2007 drawings take the form of intricately constructed concentric spheres made up of words associated with his art practice - iconic words that have been appropriated by the history and theory of art are reworked by the artist to present a model of ineligibility.

"At some point I started to realise that we are all judged by what we say about what we do, so I started to write down words and statements on paper which I felt expressed my own approach to art"

"I wrote them down in pencil on paper sometimes copying them tens of times like a child learning to read and write."

"In the beginning I tried to make a simple statement, but did not have the confidence to leave it as a completed text because I did not even have the confidence to place a full stop, even if there were no words after the final word, so I cut up the text into individual words, then I randomly reorganised the words into four A4 sheets of text using all the words I had."

In John's world this recomposition of a text through the classical act of drawing gives him the footing to continue (unconsciously) building a language he can "feel comfortable with."

Process and system

The drawings in their entirety, present a labour intensive engagement, like the undertaking of an epic journey; a quest for a stable relationship with language (6) but where meaning is achieved (ironically) by the construction of a single word - a repetitive process of searching through pencil composition over hours, days, months and years.

For many observers THE WORD is our basic unit of intelligibility. For John Court the word is secondary - and on most occasions - not to be trusted. THE PENCIL LINE becomes the embodiment of a communication and this physicality of structure constitutes his primary unit of understanding because it records a mark (established in the visual representation of his bodily position) in time and space.   In this sense there is a direct correlation to the classicism of Leonardo de Vinci's drawings to show how representation through drawing can bring a form of non verbal understanding.

In relation to the learning process and the activity of reading We 'respond' to text in a different way than we might respond to a picture. Different cognitive pathways are called upon to decode the content, and we use different skills to identify meaning. For example the word 'tree' has a different structure and resonance than the picture of a tree. The word 'tree' contains a particular pattern of four symbols (syllables) to present the resonance of a word. Some dyslexic students are unable to identify the symbolic structure of a word and are therefore unable to reproduce the resonance of that word - so that it becomes just another word (7) - an incomprehensible structure.   For most observers, the spatial representation of a tree is more immediate; it signifies a mental picture of a tree.

Reading is a highly complex process which draws on a hierarchical patterning of interpretative hypotheses (8). On one level reading is an active process of selection and inference to determine meaning whilst on another level reading requires a relational position between reader and its objects - a relational position to the social, political and economic experience of our daily lives.

The Function of Concentricity in John Court's drawings One classification of concentricity is "having the same centre" - a very simple yet scientifically difficult proposition to produce. An allocation of space in time where the inner has a relationship to the outer and from that we can assume the conditions for one will affect the other. The word 'centre' signifies the existence of a centre point which is somehow embedded with an element of truth or precision.

If the centre point of a circle is not in the centre then the circle itself becomes flawed, for example a machine operating on a faulty bearing will gradually loose efficiency and break.

The consequence for language acquisition could be that if the part of the brain is somehow out of synchronisation with the rest of the brain responsible for language acquisition then 'blind spots' may appear and those problems may be amplified along the learning pathway.

In philosophical terms, Certeau shows how "circles of writing" operate at different levels to form preferences for known things. The complexity of this idea is boundless as divisions of social space produce hierarchical structures which in turn prescribe and regulate their relationship with each other in order to promote a social consciousness of 'otherness' - they prescribe their difference. (9)

"John's world" - a mirror on the instability of writing and meaning If we accept the process of communication through written language as the medium by which we form knowledge about ourselves and our place within the wider social, political and economic world, then it also follows that written language is central to how we come to understand and communicate the meanings of things we come into contact with.

I have pointed out earlier how Certeau sought to show how the act of writing itself problematises and destabilises the relationship between itself, meaning and knowledge.

As Saussure showed, language is not a fixed or neutral medium - it is dependent upon the conventions that organise language into "signifying systems". (10)

The above statement sets up a problematic cause and effect which highlights differences in significance and user ability of written language in the search for meaning - In John Court's case this difference drew him to deconstruct the structuralist approach to language thus enabling the creation of "John's world;" a world in which he could feel comfortable about text; a way of trying to understand meaning by engaging with the physicality of words within the specifics of a particular space and time.

John Court says, "I can VISUALISE concepts as they are presented in speech but I cannot trust text because it leaves me feeling confused, resulting in a fear of writing something incorrectly because I have no way of knowing what is, or is not correct"

Drawing as a morphology of language

As we have already intimated, John Court's art is to make systematic drawings of the cognitive process using the outline shape of words. The words he uses are randomly taken from his own statements about his art practice. But from this apparently random and deconstructive nature of production John Court reverses ideas of linguistic structuralism to create a system which abides to a different set of rules; the idea that words can also be visualised to create a non verbal schema. In effect John Court's work turns the mirror onto dyslexia so that when we are confronted by word images we are the ones who feel the discomfort of non understanding - the reversal being that a verbal explanation is inadequate. Copyright Steve Pratt (2007) Steve Pratt Korpikylä FINLAND February 2007

Notes
1. Montgomery, Durant, Fabb, Furniss, Mills, Ways of Reading, Routledge, 2000, p7
2. Eds. Mary Louise Pratt and Kathleen Newman, Critical Passions: Selected Essays, Duke University Press, 1999
3. Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, 1997.
4. See Peter Osbourne, Conceptual Art, Survey, Phaidon Press, London, 2002 p30 and Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, Phaidon Press, London, 1998.
5. Jonathon Flatley's essay 'Art Machine' makes a comparative assessment of the working practices of Sol Le Wit and Andy Warhol. In describing the systems nature of their work the author quotes the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann "A system is a way to reduce infinite to finite information. The system achieves this through a form of "functional simplification.a reduction of complexity that can be constructed and realised even though the world and the society where this takes place is unknown." P85.

See also
Donna De Salvo, Open Systems, Rethinking Art c1970 Tate, London 2005 - notes how various artists use "open systems of representation" to redefine their experiences in the real world.
6. Jeremy Ahearne Michel De Certeau Interpretation and its Other Stanford University Press, 1995 Jeremy Ahearne points to how Certeau looks at the ways in which successive representations of written knowledge have cut themselves off from what he calls 'orality' resulting in a kind of 'falsification' of language. P65                                                                                                             7. Ronald D. Davis, The Gift of Dyslexia, Souvenir Press, 1997, p215.
8. Montgomery, Durant, Fabb, Furniss, Mills, Ways of Reading, Routledge, 2000.
9. Jeremy Ahearne Michel De Certeau Interpretation and its Other Stanford University Press, 1995
10. De Saussure (1964)