While settling in to my residency at the Forci Foundation outside Lucca, Italy, I listened to a discussion between Katherine Everitt and and Helen Rollins entitled Hegel, Space, Politics. If nature is a void of indifference, we as spirited beings introduce difference by stepping outside of the indifferent situation that we find ourselves in. 

Everitt cited a line from Baudelaire’s poem L’Heautontimoroumenos: I am the cut and the knife (or, the wound and the knife) -- to elaborate on the idea that subjectivity is about introducing a cut of negativity, and it is that which cuts as well. I understand this as being about the will to denaturalize ones given circumstances. 

I made a banner of this statement out of the abundance of waste fabrics gleaned from the incredible textile city of Prato, “the Manchester of Italy,” and hung it up as a sort of studio mantra. I was very surprised by how much interest it drew from people I wouldn’t have guessed cared to introduce a cut of negativity into an extravagant idyll. It’s about suffering, they said, and everyone suffers. It seemed to have broad appeal, so I’ve reproduced it as a scarf.