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: Althouse

The paradox of "insisting" that words have no "fixed or stable set of meanings."

If you really believed what you are insisting, you wouldn't be insisting, you'd be, perhaps, entertaining a suggestion or toying with a notion or musing about the possibility, now wouldn't you?

And how can you inscribe a suggestion/notion/possibility like that on a big solid wall in a place called an "institute." It's the Art Institute of Chicago ? the new Modern Wing ? and when I voiced these thoughts (to Meade) the museum guard overheard, laughed, and nodded knowingly.

Here's a closeup of the artwork that supposedly expresses the fancy-schmancy idea that words have no fixed meaning:

You're not supposed to take video, but if this were video, you'd see that the words blink on and off. There is a tapping sound that corresponds to the rhythm of the blinks, and beyond the wall, in a dark room, there is a black-and-white video playing of a man tapping his feet from one side to the other along the sides of a square marked by tape on the floor. I decided the neon was the sign on the Store of Life, and the stepping, tapping man inside is the reality of what you get in that store ? according to the artist (Bruce Nauman) who has not committed suicide, surprisingly.

The piece is called "Human Nature/Life Death."

Full post as published by Althouse on February 12, 2010 (boomark / email).