Disparition[s] is a text art work that consists of a flawed-by-design physical keyboard — a literary device for conceptual writers — and its multi-layered, self-referential textual output. A literal reading renders the artwork the subject of the text, referring readers to French writer, Georges Perec’s La Disparition (translated as “The Void” by Gilbert Adair).

A metaphorical reading of the text and dismembered keyboard calls up the ghosts of the postcolonial, feminine, psychoanalytic Other, and gives form and voice to the unseen, unacknowledged, disavowed others that structure our political, socioeconomic, textual realities.

The accompanying text has been minted as an NFT on a Manifold contract. The collector receives the physical keyboard and the NFT of the text.

Kalen Iwamoto x Julien Silvano (Wen New Atelier), Disparition[s], 2023. Bluetooth keyboard, paint, mastic.