In 1980, Braco Dimitrijević built an engraved slab into the pavement outside the Cathedral in Cologne, Germany. This photo was taken in January of 1992. Dimitrijević’s critique of history relies not only on language, the usual fodder of sign systems, but on the forms we … Continue readingThis Could Be a Place of Historical Significance
Koester, Joachim Message from Andrée FIRST LINE: “In Joachim Koester’s work images and words point at each other, they confer among themselves, and suggest different ways to go.” LAST LINE: “This is a transcript of the entire deciphered text in Andreé’s last diary, which was found … Continue readingLIBRARY SHELF: Message from Andrée
Saussure tells us that no sign makes sense on its own but only in relation to other signs. The value of a sign is determined by the relationship between signs in the system as a whole. He notes the French word mouton could be translated … Continue readingChanged Priorities
This is a nondescript sign on a back road of East Anglia, England. But to anyone who has read W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, this sign might (and it does) announce the site of Alec Girrard’s model of the Temple of Jerusalem. Each … Continue readingTo the Temple
The main entrance of the Great Eastern Hotel in London offers a ‘sign’ that is hidden in plain sight. Even though it was left off the hotel’s official floorplan, three bricked in windows act as a visual sign for a Freemason’s temple built into the … Continue readingThe Sign of the Masons
A small plaque on the side of the Great Eastern Hotel in London marks the site of the old Bethlehem Hospital. The sign obscures the other name for the site. As W. G. Sebald schooled us in Austerlitz, at this same place, “the insane and … Continue readingThis is Bedlam
