Empty texts

Pascal Claude: "Préface." In: Yves – Peintures, Madrid: Fernando Franco de Sarabia Maître Imprimeur, 1954. [Reprinted in: Pierre Restany: Yves Klein. Le Monochrome. Paris: Hachette, 1974.]

Herman de Vries: Wit / Weiß. Arnhem: M.J. Israel, 1962. With an introduction by J.C. van Schagen. [Paperback reprint: Stuttgart: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 1967.]

Vincenzo Agnetti: Libro dimenticato a memoria, 1969.

APEIROS. Apériodique utopique. Revue de la lettre et du signe. Communication marginale. Nos. 1-9. Paris / Centre d'Art et de Communication, Vaduz (printed in Liechtenstein), 1971 - 1977. With 2 series of 12 supplement issues: 'revue virtuelle à éléments infiniment variables' and 'revue à concevoir et à réaliser par ceux qui la lisent, à leur guise'. Editor: Roberto Altmann. Contributors include: Roberto Altmann, Michel Jaffrenou, Maggy Mauritz, Gabriel Pomerand, Gilbert Lascault, Wolman, Pierre Restany, Villeglé, Paul Armand Gette, Annette Messager, William Burroughs, Maurice Henry, Théodore Koenig, Serge Fauchereau, Dick Higgins, Jean-François Bory, José Pierre, Marc Dachy. Each issue includes 12 blank pages of white paper, which the editor invites to leave immaculate as this allows the reader to undergo the principle of "infinitesimal" reading.

Quotes

"To love, to admire, to adore, have as expressions of their truth the negative signs of the power to express oneself. Everything that is strong in feeling and everything that excites a sudden reaction from a remote source immediately dislocates the complex mechanism of language: silence, the exclamation, or the cliché are the eloquence of the moment."

Paul Valéry: Mauvaises pensées. Paris: Gallimard, 1943, p. 83. (In: The Poetics of Paul Valéry, trans. Jean Hytier. New York: Anchor Books, 1966.)

"Write nothing! Read nothing! Say nothing! Print nothing!"

"O nichevokakh v poezzi." In: Sobachii iashchik. Moscow: Hobo, 1921, p. 8.

Das Theaterstück, in dem schweigend auf völlig leerer, lebloser Bühne der Vorhang zwei Stunden lang aufbleibt, um das Nichts, die Stille "aufzuführen".

Willy Hochkeppel: "Transformation der Kunst und die Ästhetik der analytischen Philosophie."
Kunstforum International 100 (April/May 1989), p. 215.

"In der Kunst ist es schwer etwas zu sagen, was so gut ist wie: nichts zu sagen."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, ca. 1932-1934. Vermischte Bemerkungen, p. 50.

"I have no idea what to write. That box full of words is there somewhere of course. And the regulations of how one is to chain those words are in reach. But I lack the idea of what I would want to paraphrase. Can that be a problem? If so, can it be solved? Should it be solved? Is a white sheet of paper not better than one with typographical stains? Dirty paper! A matter for librarians to hold in trust a lot of it. Poor people! I feel like reading books with blank pages. There Boekie Woekie, books by artists, comes in handy, because we have for sale, thanks to Cornelia who makes them, something we call _(empty book)_ by BW, various sizes, differently many pages EUR 4.- to EUR 11,50."

[Jan Voss, Diary, June 20th, 2002.]