Repeat, Revolt, Remember

Andrea Torreblanca

Sometimes language is out there in the world, waiting to be used, uttered or broken. While
speeches and languages are collective revelations, writing and reading are personal
constructions. In an untitled text (c.1921), artist Liubov Popova stated that Not a single
historical moment will be repeatedRevolution in art has always predicted the breaking of
the old public consciousness and the appearance of a new world order in life. i
In the spirit of the avant-garde, artists pursued a profound transformation of social life
through the fracture of semiotics and ideology. Political manifestos, speeches and
propaganda were continuously being subverted, transcribed or stolen to be adapted as
free speech, and the words of a few were meant to become the voice of the others.

When artist Kathleen Ritter decided to delve into the relationship between syntax and
political declarations, she coalesced both: an account of collective resistance as well as of
social behaviour. Contrary to Popovas statement, Ritter knows that words in speech are
ubiquitous and that language unfolds the continuous repetition of the past. However, the
artist goes farther into unravelling the connotation of revolutionary statements.
For her series Revolt, the artist compiled a variety of sources linked to revolutionary
moments, including political speeches and avant-garde films, feminist writings and artists
manifestos, song lyrics and protest slogans; These writings were subsequently
transcribed into shorthand, a resourceful method to encrypt what could be selfexplanatory.

On the one hand, the use of stenography brings out into the open what once was a
powerful and valuable tool that eventually led to steganography: a mechanism used for
espionage and undercover operations during war. On the other hand, it is also a trope that
bears the signs of cultural difference and privilege, considering that shorthand was a task
designed for listening, copying and typing and mainly relegated to women.
After all, stenography did not only transformed the way in which spoken language was
read and transmitted, but it epitomizes the womens labour force during the twentieth
century; it represents a modern ambition and aspiration to belong to society itself.

What is more, it is a mechanism that coincides with the increasing exploration of language
in art: from the Dadas to the lettrists. Today, shorthand writing is widely unknown,
consigned to oblivion and mainly obsolete. For the ordinary reader, it is closer to the style
of asemic writing practiced by artists such as Brion Gysin, Isidore Isou or Henri Michaux.
However, Ritter is consciously aware that stenography is still a decipherable alphabet for
those able to read it, and thus she implies a rhetorical question beyond visuality: How
much do we understand about historicity without the notion of the other? Whether it is the
other language or the other person.

This is the reason why the artist meticulously adapts, selects, quotes and paraphrases
revolutionary statements: an account of what has been repeated and obliterated through
textuality. In short, a history of domination and fixed ideologies.
Gregory L. Ulmerii describes how modernist (linguistic) examples have been copied,
repeated and modelled throughout postmodernism through techniques such as collage,
montage, mimesis and allegory. In his description of Derridas Grammatology (a significant
reference for Ritter), he speaks about the text as texturetouching languagein

which the deconstructive writing traces the surface of the object of study (writing as
tracing) looking for flaws or faultsthe opening of joints, articulations, where the text
might be dismembered. In the same way, Ritter wistfully uses montage and the texture of
writing to dissect in layers the signs and symptoms of language. She selects the essential
words that have pervaded collective consciousness and that have motivated social unrest.

The theoretician Homi k. Bhabha suggests that the historical moment of political action
must be thought of as part of the history of the form of its writingiii. So when Ritter
interweaves the history of female labour, semiotics and revolution, she is also crossexamining notions of concealment, coding and misrepresentation. The role of theory
mentioned by Bhabha has always played an essential role in social transformation,
whether it evolved from society itself or was propagated by the ruling class.
The language of revolution has been smuggled not only in its obvious form: camouflage,
but also by means of political and theoretical influence. In consequence, her oeuvre
consistently implies the resistance of language to be deciphered, transmitted and
translated. It anticipates that the flaws and faults found in repetition also bring to memory
that which was left elsewhere in history.

ii

Popova, Liubov. "On Organizing Anew C. 1921." 100 Artists' Manifestos. London: Penguin, 2011. 195. Print.

Ulmer, Gregory L. "The Object of Post-Criticism." The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster.
New York: New, 2002. 93-125. Print.
iii
Bhabha, Homi K. "The Commitment to Theory." The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. 22-23. Print.