Words are malleable materialities. They not only mediate meaning but also have visual, material, spatial, and sonic qualities. Words weave texts. They activate textures of matter and meaning; they are not only embedded in but also generate spaces/places/sites: text*ures.
Text*ures are living organisms that change, expand, metabolize, fade, disappear, emerge again…
Paul Klee famously described the practice of drawing as taking a line for a walk („[An] active line develops freely [and] goes out for a walk“. Klee, Paul. Notebooks Volume 1: The Thinking Eye. London: Percy Lund Humphries & Co Ltd. 1961. p. 105.)
By approaching a word as a line, as a material articulation of aesthetic experience or thought exploration, we operate with words as with malleable materials. By taking a word for a walk, its meaning can experience a transition, influenced by the material agency and unique ability of a person’s body that merges with its surroundings. The words – the operative verbs – which Elena proposed for this exercise originate from the book “Operative Design” by architects Antoni Di Mari and Nora Yoo. In this concise volume, the authors compiled a glossary of basic architectural actions as fundamental dynamics for built spaces. The selection of thirty operative verbs is subdivided into three main categories: add, displace, and subtract. The verbs describe actions of a single basic volume (e.g., expand or twist), as well as the connection of two or more volumes (e.g., merge or overlap).
By taking a word that signifies a dynamic within a solid, built space for a walk, Eva and Nim explore material possibilities for transforming the word's meaning by embodying it through the movement and malleability of their bodies, embedding it within the spatial dynamic and material specificity of the studio.
