To write that you are unable to write is also writing. 

    In the autumn of 2010, I found myself in Paris trying to write a collection of poems, but to avoid what I seemed unable of achieving anyway, I roamed the city and accidentally came past the Centre Pompidou. Inside was an exhibition of works by Hanne Darboven, Mirtha Dermisache, Pierrette Bloch, Irma Blank and many other artists who had in common that they were women and that they wrote. But their texts had no content; so-called asemic writing. Some works were sculptural; Pierrette Bloch’s twisting constructions of horsehair spanned the space casting shadow writing on the walls. But most of the works were two-dimensional and related to the page or the surface of paper itself. German Irma Blank presented examples from Eigenschriften, a form of diary, begun during a move to Italy where she became unable to communicate with her surroundings in her native language. The lines on the paper are reminiscent of writing; with rhythm, time and repetition, but lacking semantic content the sentences have become pure sensations, transferred from the hand to surface of the paper. 

    After half a lifetime spent in libraries, among syllabus lists, shared literary canons, which of course form the backbone of literature, and from which one can take eccentric detours according to interests, I had stumbled across a shadow library, a parallel universe that made me realise that there were people who did other things with writing. They resembled an angry chorus of voices who refused to conform to current norms and expressed their authorship in other ways. 

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