2023
Two Black Cubes
#notesfromtheunconscious
The viewer is presented with two black cubes. One contains a stack of sheets bearing texts; the other is empty. The viewer takes a single sheet, reads the text, reflects upon it, and then places the read sheet into the empty cube.
The texts on these sheets were created by artist Irina Merkulova using the technique of automatic writing—a practice rooted in the unconscious activity of the writer. This method was first developed by the French writer André Breton, the founder of Surrealism. The present experiment shares a certain kinship with the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment—except here, the “cat” is the meaning of the text itself.
Through this writing method, texts emerge with varied structures, yet their meaning has been deliberately “torn out,” leaving a void where understanding would normally reside. Complex entanglements of metaphor, metonymy, and paradoxical juxtapositions—offered without attribution or addressee—confuse the reader’s conscious mind, yet simultaneously guide thought toward meaning, constructing intricate associative corridors in search of explanation. At the site of this semantic void appears what seems at first glance a “nonsensical” text, resembling a delusional construction. Yet each word and combination feels addressed directly to the reader, inviting them to grasp something they already somehow know—and prompting a search for that knowledge through chains of thought, guided by signifiers that point toward other signifiers.
Here we can observe one of the psyche’s most essential capacities: its ability to continue indefinitely. Even when confronted with dead ends, incomprehensible knots of meaning, or its outright absence, thought does not cease—it forges its own pathways toward understanding the phenomenon it has encountered. Upon meeting the unknown, the human mind inevitably sets out in search of truth, as if it already possesses some latent knowledge of the phenomenon but cannot articulate it. In this way, one may find oneself lost in the labyrinth of one’s own consciousness, searching for something whose very nature remains elusive.
Whether the text holds meaning or not depends entirely on the reader—just as Schrödinger’s cat acquires a definite state of existence only upon observation.
The texts on these sheets were created by artist Irina Merkulova using the technique of automatic writing—a practice rooted in the unconscious activity of the writer. This method was first developed by the French writer André Breton, the founder of Surrealism. The present experiment shares a certain kinship with the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment—except here, the “cat” is the meaning of the text itself.
Through this writing method, texts emerge with varied structures, yet their meaning has been deliberately “torn out,” leaving a void where understanding would normally reside. Complex entanglements of metaphor, metonymy, and paradoxical juxtapositions—offered without attribution or addressee—confuse the reader’s conscious mind, yet simultaneously guide thought toward meaning, constructing intricate associative corridors in search of explanation. At the site of this semantic void appears what seems at first glance a “nonsensical” text, resembling a delusional construction. Yet each word and combination feels addressed directly to the reader, inviting them to grasp something they already somehow know—and prompting a search for that knowledge through chains of thought, guided by signifiers that point toward other signifiers.
Here we can observe one of the psyche’s most essential capacities: its ability to continue indefinitely. Even when confronted with dead ends, incomprehensible knots of meaning, or its outright absence, thought does not cease—it forges its own pathways toward understanding the phenomenon it has encountered. Upon meeting the unknown, the human mind inevitably sets out in search of truth, as if it already possesses some latent knowledge of the phenomenon but cannot articulate it. In this way, one may find oneself lost in the labyrinth of one’s own consciousness, searching for something whose very nature remains elusive.
Whether the text holds meaning or not depends entirely on the reader—just as Schrödinger’s cat acquires a definite state of existence only upon observation.