CIPRIAN MURESAN

Notes Towards the Composition of a Piece on Ciprian Mureşan Or The Stakes of Drawing a Drawing on Drawing Whilst Copying a Book for a Book to be Published Soon Too Soon Deadline Imminent by Hatje Cantz as a Way of Introducing Myself to the Artist Prior to Journeying to Cluj for the Second Time the First being More than Twenty Five Years Ago Just Before the Revolution Which I Had No Idea was About to Happen Despite Its Being Immanent to What I Found There on the Ground I Wonder What He was Up to Then Mureşan I Mean Maybe We Passed Each Other By Contrails Crossed Only Now Visible He’s a Mureşan I mean He’s a Page Turner a Highly Talented Page Turner Rather than a Reader in Bernhard’s Sense He Turns the Pages Mureşan I mean and Out of That Action Emerges a Fraction that Intensifies the Whole a Thousand Times more Thoroughly than the Normal Reader who Reads Everything but does Not Read a Single Page Thoroughly he says Bernhard I Mean no Reger His Reger in His Bernhard’s I Mean Old Masters Sitting His Reger I Mean in Front of White-Bearded Man As If the Act which Seems Closer to Inaction than Action of Sitting There in the Bordone Room in Front of White-Bearded Man Was the Same as Benjamin’s Walter Benjamin’s One Way Street Walker on Foot Reading More Closely the Text than the One Flying Overhead Who Sees Only the Way the Road Pushes Through the Landscape Determined by It and Not How the Road Commands the Landscape at Every Turn Like a Commander Deploying Soldiers at the Front He Says Benjamin Walter Benjamin Before Declaring OK So It’s a False Opposition but It’s Beautiful I Think This Side of the Dichotomy Like the Copied Text Commands the Soul of He Who Copies It Because He Who Copies the Text Submits His Soul to Command Thereby Opening the Inte.. To What? Because He Who Copies the Text Submits His Soul to Command To Command? Yes to Command Thereby Opening the Interior He Submits His Soul to Command Thereby Opening the Interior to Its Clearings Its Pathways Its Prospects Copying the Pages of The Book Not Just Over and Over but Over the Over Copying Over the Copy Made Already to Such an Extent that the Marks Become Indiscernible From the White of the Page No Background Now But a Surface Immanent Surface Or Rather the Background Drawn Up Into the Surface for That’s What an Artwork is Immanent Surface Drawing Through I Call It Drawing Through Where Drawing Through is to Draw Through Drawing Where the Drawing Goes Through All the Way Through Drawing the Gesture of Copying Drawing to Get to Drawing Drawing Through the Gesture of Drawing Depositing in the Drawing What is Immanent to the Act of Drawing Where What is Deposited is As Much the Gesture of Copying as What That Gesture Produces There is No External Thing of Which This is A Copy Mureşan’s Drawings are not Copies of This or That Book When Mureşan Copies Something He is Bringing Something About as Real as That Which He Copies A Reality the Truth of Which is Not Measured According to the Thing Copied Neither its Correspondence Nor the Adequation but by The Intensity of the Copy A Reality the Truth of Which is Intensified for Its Being the Gesture Which Reals It Copy Here does not Mean that the Reality Resides in the Relation of Drawing to the Thing Copied but that The Reality of This Relation is In the Drawing Becoming an Intenser Real Not the Intensification of the Book’s Reality but a Reality Given in Departing From and Depositing the Thing Copied Mureşan is Laying Down an Abyssal Surface for Reflection Wherefrom a Reflection would be Last Year at Marienbad You Remember the Vanishing Mirror Scene Or Scotty Falling Through Spiral Staircase and Never Hitting the Ground Or the Stunt Pilot as Bernhard Remarks in an Interview Flying Higher and Higher the Stunt Pilot I Mean Until He Disappears from View Without Return the Endless Copying Here No Different to How Rauschenberg Erased a Drawing Erased Without Erasing a Drawing by De Kooning Because in the Erased the Marks of Erasure were Nonetheless Indeed No Less Present than the so-called Original Drawing Thus Depositing in the Surface as the Surface of the Piece the Gesture of Erasing Unfinishing De Kooning’s Drawing as a Drawn Thing Whilst at the Same Time Completing It as a Gesture of Drawing Which I Think is What Mureşan is Also Doing by Completing Unfinished Novels or Having Two Different Performances Each with its Own Director Neither Knowing in Advance What the Other is Directing Performed on the Same Stage Rhythming that Surface Into One Thing Where the Ending is Indiscernible From the Beginning Again Setting up A Pulse to be Felt Sooner or Later as With The Two Pianolas of Nancarrow’s Canon X Although Nancarrow Sought to Overcome The Chance Encounter of Their Meeting But So Too does Mureşan Inasmuch as the Directors will Need to Work Around the Contingent Confrontation of the Other’s Autonomy and Vice Versa But Anyway There is No Such Thing as The Pure Chance Encounter or Pure Autonomy for That Matter Mureşan’s Works Continually Folding Back Into Themselves the Gesture Which Would Otherwise Try and Escape the Work Leaving Behind Flat Depthlessness No Surface No Rhythm Instead of Which Mureşan’s Play of Appearance Disappearance its Disruption its Capture Making Fun of the Page Taking Away its Lead Actor Role As Support or Rather Thickening it Into Collaboration A Detail of the Earth Where the Whole is Indiscernible from the Fragment No Whole From Part No End From Beginning No Mark From Whiteness Only Series With No Hierarchy No Causality Copy of Copy You’ve Heard That Before Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield Copying Words Traced On Page Notes Punched In Roll Marks Projected On Screen Number 1 0 0 1