Symbols abound in Shannon Ebner’s work. She uses them as if they were words in a poem, emphasizing their polysemy and multiplying the number of potential meanings and interpretations. Like musical scores, her alphabets make intervals and suspensions literal and thus visible. They include the “other” (silence, non-verbal signs, misspellings, handwriting) as a presence whose meaning must be negotiated. They capitalize what is usually repressed in written language (or simply taken for granted), in order to reinstate another structure of understanding. Language is an expression of order and Ebner makes this very clear by giving each letter the weight of concrete. STRIKE slows down the pace of reading to its zero degree. One letter, one page. One letter, one page. A slash. An exercise in reading akin to our first decodings of the written word, when we started, as children, learning how to do things “by the book.”

Texts by Barbara Casavecchia, Alessandro Giammei.

Softcover, 520 pages, 8 inches x 9.9 inches, Mousse Publishing 2015.