The mortifying ordeal of being known A Fragment by Tim Kreider opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. lovehumanity
To enact visually the message The inscription is itself a perceptual component within the space of the garden insofar as it becomes a pattern of sameness and difference. Paired identical terms are interspersed between paired different terms. This movement between repetition and difference seems, at least in part, to be intended to enact visually the message of the inscription itself. Matthew Simms, Robert Irwin: A Conditional Art Ever Present, Ever ChangingSelf-publishing, self-exemplifying