COSMOS

Not to lose ourselves in the cosmos, we take hold of a reference point in space. We look for a point that is in sharp focus where the contemplation about the cosmos can materialize and find a sheet of paper. With each new line of text – extracted from George Perec’s Espèces d’espaces – an image of the cosmos is taking shape from my personal reference point.

Within this frame of the page the other scale levels can be considered. However, these other levels can never expand beyond the limits of the page as our focus decreases with every increase in scale. Where you can scrutinize every square centimetre of the sheet of paper – and you literally traverse each one with your pen / the ink of the silkscreen print / ... – your bedroom has unknown corners, your house has places covered under a thick layer of dust, ...

With every increase in scale level, the precision of its representation on the sheet of paper drops. The page is represented with a 1 to 1 precision, the bedroom, house street, town, country, continent, earth, cosmos are each time smaller until you end up with the single dot at the centre of the page: a final abstraction.

Thomas Willemse 
March 2014