Klara Vertes
Seeing the red thread
April 12-16
Seeing the red thread:
The conspiracy theorist holds stock in finding an explanation. It is an intimate, obsessive, paranoid search for an alternate truth. Operating on the fringe of acceptable knowledge production, conspiracy resembles a belief system in that it requires faith in highly unconventional evidence. The thing is, when one is desperate for evidence, its sources grow virtually unlimited, and patterns begin to emerge everywhere. One sees the red thread in everything. I can empathize with this mindset, and attest to its allure: conspiracy promises a redistribution of power over knowledge, and provides the necessary space to process the absurdity of senseless tragedies.
Especially senseless tragedies that can’t fit in lockets:
A pile of broken lockets sits in the corner, victims of their own smallness. The keepsake a killing thing, ripping off the arms of every silver hug, its hugeness breaking hinges. Each time a locket dies, a heart is split in two! Their cavities are too small for certain sentiments (that really require entire archives be built). A murder board is a kind-of heart-shaped archive: searching for a pulse with red twine-veins, branching out from a series of document-arteries.“To hold something in one’s heart” is a kitschy way of referring to the heart’s storage capacity, as well as the inherent preciousness of containment. This is but one facet of enclosure, the other is captivity.
The cupboard about to burst:
The earth can only fit so many secrets in closed fists (knobby knuckles are prone to spillage). Nature and its laws, specifically entropy, collaborate to destroy taxonomies. I find that whenever I create a system (with air holes poked in every box), things end up bursting out of their compartments. Perhaps something smooth-talking is seeping in through the holes, the viral agents of another system.
This empty bed a fossil:
I find myself salivating over a fly preserved in amber like how believers accept the unknowable. A certain comfort comes from knowing the peat bog’s secret (perfectly incorrupt bodies and ancient butter embalmed in its depths). Mysteries and esoteric knowledge are kindred in their covert packaging, some things swaddled in cocoons, other things tucked away by tight-lipped pallbearers (in urns beneath the floorboards). In amassing a collection of found things, I would like to say that these hoarded parts long for wholeness, and that wholeness offers closure. I would like to say that my systems operate like esoteric grids, and that they allow each unit to evoke its own innate mysticism. Unfortunately, I appear to be coming to, or manifesting, an unsavory conclusion: the greatest mystery of all is death.
Copyright © Klara Vertes 2020