The work has the silent duty to impose itself,
not to expose itself,
but to impose itself with extraordinary violence.
The work nails us, it must be difficult to ignore,
always leaving us in the presence of something inviolable.
She remembers burying,
obscuring one gesture after another
with the veil of instinct of emotion.
She remembers in silence.
“…Nothing must stand
Between you and the shapes you take
When the crust of shape has been destroyed.
You as you are? You are yourself.
It has been necessary to submit to vacancy in order to begin again, to clear ground, to make space. I can allow nothing to be received. Therein lies my triumph and my mediocrity. Nothing is the destiny of every-one, it is our commonness made dumb. I am passing it on. The Monument is a void, artless and everlasting.
What I was I am no longer. I speak for nothing, the nothing that I am, the nothing that is this work. And you shall perpetuate me not in the name of what I was, but in the name of what I am.”
Mark Strand, The Monument
