I have recently discovered that if you give a heavy 'presidential style' antique desk an almighty shove you can completely tear it off its pedestal. It is the sound of splintering wood that gives it away.
Oddly enough, my somewhat startled host seemed slightly less than delighted; indeed, I almost suspected that he found it in his heart to positively dislike me. However, I think I managed to convince him that his new asymmetric and somewhat wobbly 'desk' was an interesting work of modern art - a postModernist ironic take on the outmoded and frankly rather crass bourgeois concept of a utilitarian desk.
First, there is an obvious Marxist spin in the way that through an interesting conceptual trope – a twisting in on itself or involution – Desk, as I shall now call my creation, exposes the plight of the exploited worker and thus the violence at the very heart of the capitalist system. The unfortunate wage lackey now faces the ever present risk of serious injury if the damn thing collapses on him as he works – echoes of Damocles - thus fostering a need to complete each task with the utmost alacrity. "Work fast or the system will crush you" is the obvious subtext.
From another angle, Desk makes a clear philosophical statement, calling to mind amongst other things Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit or Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. What better metaphor could there be for the rootless, baseless false mode of dasein’s being-in-the-world than this rocking piece of furniture, now forever only tangentially attached to its pedestal? One is almost moved to tears by this stark yet elegant articulation of everyday ontological experience. Desk, in short, opens up whole vistas of existential angst and even horror.
Third, of course, is the almost blatant allusion to the post structuralism works of the late Jacques Derrida. All texts are ultimately groundless; all language rests on nothing other than itself. There is nothing beyond the text. As a foundation for writing, the transformed desk is less than satisfactory - however, as Desk , it paradoxically does provide a foundation in the writer's constant awareness of its provisionality. It is a surface but not a base.
It is amazing that a couple of seconds of work by a high-octane deconstructive performance artist (as I am now tempted to style myself) could so utterly transform and enrich such a mundane object, investing it with hitherto unsuspected depths of meaning.
If you would like me to work similar artistic wonders at your property I am available for a reasonable fee. There is a small extra charge if the project requires wrecking balls or bulldozers.
