Il y a Blanc de Titre Jean-Luc Nancy

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S. Fritscher (ed.), Blank of Title Springer-Verlag/Wien 2012

II y a blanc de titre et cest peut-tre ainsi que a commence. Quoi? On ne peut pas le dire. On ne peut pas dire au commencement ce qui commence. On ne peut mme pas dire au commencement que a commence. Quand on le dit, quand on dit a commence , cest dj commenc et cest par consquent dj fini de commencer : a commence finir. On ne peut pas dire o a commence, ni quand ce qui est la mme chose, une mme chose despace-temps quon ne peut pas dire. Mais cela ne veut pas dire quil faudrait le taire, ni que le blanc de titre correspondrait une immobilisation religieuse lentre dun sanctuaire. Cela ne veut pas dire quil faudrait rserver et prserver le secret de ce commencement et de cette fin de commencement de cette fin qui commence en lui plus avant que lui, de cette fin qui commence le commencement, qui entame son ouverture. Cela ne veut pas dire quil y aurait l un mystre silencieux, et quil faudrait contempler dans le silence. Car ce quil y a l nest rien, nest pas quelque chose qui aurait lieu, ni dans lespace-temps du monde, ni hors de lui et comme dans un autre monde hors de ce monde-ci. Ce quil y a l, cest l il y a, cest lavoir-lieu lui-mme, ce nest pas quelque chose, cest le commencement-et-fin de quelque chose. Cest Il y a soi-mme et en personne, autant dire: personne ni aucune chose, mais la chose elle-mme, telle quen elle-mme le paratre la noie et la chose y consent. On ne peut pas le dire, parce quil ny a rien dire: rien du tout, rien dune totalit qui serait de substance et de forme, de surface et de fond, de commencement et de fin, et rien par consquent daucune partie dun tout qui sest absent dans la prsence. On ne peut mme pas dire quon ne peut pas le dire. Celui qui viendrait dire ici et maintenant quon ne peut pas le dire, celui-l devrait tre venu dailleurs et avoir dj dit ou entendu

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dire, ailleurs, ce quon peut dire et ce quon ne peut pas dire. Il devrait avoir le savoir de ce monde et dun autre monde, de ce sens et dun autre sens, de ce dire et dun autre dire qui consisterait se taire.
Mais ici et maintenant personne nest dj venu. a vient seulement, et a commence. a finit justement de venir dailleurs et de se prcder dans un pass. Le pass lui-mme est pass (cen est fini de finir, autant que de commencer), cest--dire quil ne sest rien pass et on ne peut mme pas dire quil ne sest rien pass encore , car il ny a aucun espace-temps pour un tel pas encore. Il ny a pas eu de veille, pas dattente, ni de prparation, ni de gense, ni de promesse, ni dangoisse. Et cela mme, quil ny a rien eu, nest rien quon doive taire, puisquil ny a rien l qui serait dire ou taire. Il ny a pas de l, pas de l-bas cach, perdu, absent. Il ny a pas dabsence. Ou bien, cest labsence mme en prsence. Cest pour cette raison quon ne peut pas dire on ne peut pas le dire. Il ny a ni impossibilit de parler, ni obligation de silence. Ce qui signifie quil ny a ni aphasie, ni extase, ni inhumanit, ni religion. Il y a que a commence cela mme, trs exactement: le commencer-ici-et-maintenant sans ailleurs, ni pass, ni futur. Cela par quoi il y a un ici-et-maintenant. Il ny a pas le taire, et ny a donc pas non plus le dire, comme si ctait quelque chose de pos l, devant mon intention de dire, comme une chose inerte, informe ou obscure, qui attendrait quon vienne la saisir et la ptrir de signification. Il ny a pas du sens cach, ni une machine faite pour lexprimer. Le sens quil y a l est dispos tout autrement: comme une vidence, comme lvidence de quelque chose qui se montre et qui se dit, qui se dit en se montrant. Il ny a rien dire : il y a commencement, et donc tout la fois, tout dun coup, dans le blanc de titre, la chose et le dire et leur il y a . Le il y a en tant que le la fois de la chose et de son dire. Le sens en tant que le sens de ltre-l. Il ny a pas dire ce sens-l, mais il y a dire et chose la fois. La manifestation est elle-mme dire et chose la fois: profration dune prsentation, prsentation dune profration. Il ny a pas la chose dune part, et dautre part le dire. Lavoir-lieu de la chose, son commence ment-et-fin, est la fois dire et chose. Cest la mme chose : mais diffrente en elle-mme. Ainsi, par consquent, on dit, a se sera dit cette fois: il y a blanc de titre . Cette fois, cest--dire: loccasion de cette peinture de Susanna Fritscher.

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Loccasion, la rencontre, ce qui na ni commencement ni fin, ce qui tient tout entier dans linstant, un battement entre deux sries, entre chose et dire, entre lieu et lieu. Le battement dune ouverture, comme on dit en musique une ouverture: une partie o se retient le tout, o le commencement prend son thme dans la fin, une cadence ou une mesure qui se retire de la succession, qui ne se mesure pas selon le continu, qui rompt le continu avant quil ait continu. Il y a blanc de titre nest pas une phrase, et ce nest pas non plus un silence. Ce nest pas une phrase bien forme, il lui manque une syntaxe, et avec celle-ci, il lui manque du sens. Mais ce nest pas pour autant un mystre, ce nest pas un autre sens pour initi, pour visionnaire ou pour devin. Cest un commencement et qui donc pourrait tre initi au commencement? Cest le commencement tout la fois dun dire et dune chose, lun et lautre blancs au lieu de leur titre: ne se dsignant pas, ne renvoyant pas lun lautre. Ne faisant pas de sens, disant pourtant ce qui est plein de sens : voici, il y a. Lorsquil y a un titre, il faut que de deux choses lune ait prcd: ou bien la chose-chose, avec en elle quelque chose qui aurait commenc, initi quelque chose dun sens proposer, indiquer ou voquer; ou bien la chose-dire, avec en elle quelque indication ou signification do la chose aurait pris son lan. Mais ici ni lune ni lautre na commenc, lune et lautre ont fini ensemble, lintersection dune peinture et dun propos, cette intersection quil ny a ni peindre, ni dire, et qui fait louverture de lune et de lautre chose, ou plutt louverture de ce qui les spare Ie jeu lui-mme de lintersection. Et cest bien cette ouverture que lune et lautre chose est chacune ouverte pour soi comme avec lautre. Cest au battement commun dun blanc de titre.
Il y a blanc de titre ne sert pas de titre pour suppler labsence de titre donn par Susanna Fritscher. (Notez-le, cela mme peut scrire de deux manires: ou bien labsence de titre donn, ou bien labsence de titre donne. Elle naura pas donn de titre, ce qui peut aussi revenir en garder un secret, ou bien elle aura donn pour titre labsence et le blanc de titre. Peut-tre la peinture donne toujours labsence au titre, et lcriture un titre labsence). Ce nest pas une supplance de titre, ni un titre par dfaut. Cela indique mais nindique pas cela expose mais sans montrer cette absence elle-mme en tant que le commencement de la

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chose. La peinture en tant que commencement de la chose. La peinture vient l o les titres finissent, si du moins les titres ont vraiment pour fonction de dire ce que cest que cette peinture, do elle vient, o elle va, ce quelle veut dire. (Mais on sait bien quil nen est rien, et que les titres ne disent jamais rien que leur propre intersection avec la peinture, qui pour sa part ne dit rien mais touche seulement au bord des titres, y touche par son retrait. En ce sens, tous les titres sont blancs, sont des blancs de peinture. Et cest la mme chose pour les titres des choses crites.)

Il y a blanc de titre nest la place daucun titre absent. Cela nvoque ni ne mime aucun sens retenu, dtenu par Susanna Fritscher ni par quiconque. Si ctait, malgr tout, la place de quelque chose, ce serait seulement la place du nom de S. F. Mais la place dun nom propre, il ny a rien, il ny a pas de place. La place dun nom propre nest elle -mme que lespace-temps dun commencement, lespacement dun temps, le temps dun espacement: la naissance de cette femme. II y a est donc aussi bien sa place je veux dire, sa place elle, celle qui peint ces toiles. la place de son geste de peindre. Son geste de toucher la toile et la peinture, de toucher la toile avec la peinture, et de faire se toucher la peinture, sans commencement ni fin, juste au commencement et la fin de la peinture, semportant le long delle-mme, glissant lisse sur elle-mme, par couches consentantes les unes sur les autres, touchant au dehors par tout son dedans.
Mais cela mme fait aussi, malgr tout, un titre. Car un titre nest ni un nom propre, ni un nom commun. Il ne signifie pas, il ne dsigne pas non plus. Le titre nest pas un signe. Au contraire. Le titre est toujours un cart, un cartement de la chose, la marque dun blanc entre la chose et elle -mme: son commencement mme et sa fin, lespace par lequel a souvre et a tient ouvert. Le titre ne dit rien : il indique que tout est dire, ou rien. Le titre ne fait rien que toucher la chose ferme, la clture quil faut pour que a souvre, pour quil y ait ouvrir. Le titre ferme et ouvre dun seul geste: cest louverture. Il y a quelque chose: a commence. Il y a cest le titre lui-mme, le titre de tout titre et le blanc du titre , il y a appartient la fois au dire et la chose, et ne revient ni lun ni la autre. Il y a est commun au dire et la chose, qui nont rien en commun. Cest entre les deux, cest

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exactement lentre-deux, le partage du dire et de la chose. Le va-et-vient de lun lautre. Ltre dans le dire et le dire dans ltre, lun hors de lautre, lun touchant lautre, lun commenant o finit lautre, lun commenant lautre finissant lun.
Quelque chose vient au bord du dire, ne disant rien, mettant fin au dire avant quil ait commenc. Une chose va parler de son propre commencement, ne parle pas, met fin ce commencement, commence tre dans cette fin. Pas de cause ni de production, pas de raison, pas de fond do procder : seulement un geste, un passage, une coule tenue, lisse, avance et immobilise sur elle-mme. Seulement une technique, cest--dire un art de passer mme la chose, de passer en elle, de passer par elle, daller delle en elle-mme, continment, discrtement, toujours la limite, mais la limite dploye sans limites. On peut nommer cela: peinture. Ce mot donne un support mais il pose un obstacle, la fois. Quest-ce que peindre? Ce nest ni reprsenter, ni couvrir une surface. Cest toucher un il y a, son absolu sans fin ni commencement. Une chose consent tre l: elle occupe son lieu, elle a lieu l, elle fait sens seulement ouvrir ce lieu. Peindre cest consentir ce consente ment. Ce nest pas dire lvnement de cet avoir-lieu, ce nest pas le tenir en laisse de signification. Cest consentir lcart qui dpose et expose la chose. Cest le mouvement double de se perdre en soi-mme et de souvrir au dehors: de se perdre en souvrant, douvrir ce qui se perd sa perte mme. Sa perte est son ouverture: ce nest pas une perte, car rien ntait gagn ni possd. Mais sabmer en soi est louverture. Elle ouvre ceci: elle-mme elle-mme, la chose, couches sur couches tales, passes lune dans lautre en sorte quil ne reste rien que la prsence qui se drobe en faisant surface. On ne saurait dire quelle parat. Il apparat plutt quil y a l de lapparatre, et quil est dj retourn en soi, dj fini dapparatre.

Louverture nouvre rien et nouvre sur rien : ni paisseur, ni profondeur. La profondeur elle-mme est un blanc. Louverture ouvre la fois ce qui reste obstinment clos dans louverture mme, et ce qui est toujours dj ouvert, ce qui sest toujours dj entrouvert. Cest aussi pourquoi elle finit le commencement et commence la fin. Cela na rien dun jeu, rien dun cliquetis verbal. Cest le revers du verbal. Cest la patience de consentir ltre-l.

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Le gris consent au blanc, qui consent lui, lun lautre se donnant fin, commencement, lun se donnant lautre. De lun lautre il y a mlange et csure, partage, et cest l tout ce quil y a. Mais ce partage ne partage rien de tranch ni de distribu. Ce nest pas un change, ni une rpartition. Cest un partage du mme au mme, la diffrence mme, la distinction comme commun dsir, commune attraction. Ce qui tire lun lautre et lun de lautre est la communaut de leur consentement diffrer lun de lautre. Mais diffrer de manire insensible, car lun nest rien que la limite de lautre. Lautre se prolonge donc en lun, insensiblement, indfiniment en sy perdant pourtant.

Comment consentir linsensible ? Comment avoir le sens de linsensible, et sy accorder, y trouver son rythme? Il faut que linsensible soit lui-mme sensible, insensiblement sensible: aucune froideur, aucun retrait, aucune indiffrence, mais en quelque sorte, le sentir lui-mme, suspendu sur lui-mme, ouvert sur lui-mme. Lintrieur gris-blanc du sentir.
En vrit, on ne peut pas dire gris, ni blanc, pas plus quon ne peut parler ici ni de support, ni de surface, ni de tableau ni de motif, ni de figure. Gris et blanc ne sont que les ples de cette coule de la lumire en soi par quoi il y a lumire (le noir est une autre lumire, qui ne joue aucun rle ici: la lumire de la vrit, son abme). Gris et blanc sont le-commencement-la-fin de lapparatre. Il ny a donc en eux que le discontinu du continu, lvnement de ltre: quil nest quvnement, et que lvnement nest pas. Gris et blanc ne peuvent pas tre compris ici comme des noms de couleurs ou de teintes, ou de leurs rsultantes ou rsolutions. La couleur est tout simplement absente. Il ny a rien de lordre de la couleur en tant que la couleur est ce qui appartient une surface en dehors de ses dimensions. Prcisment, il ny a que les dimensions. Il ny a que la mesure et le rapport. Ainsi, puisquil est impossible davoir une surface sans couleur, on peut dire quici, il ny a pas de surface. On dira indiffremment quil y a pure profondeur, ou quil y a pure dimension. Cest la mme chose: il y a louverture, lespacement. Il y a comme une eau, ouverte et ferme la fois, en elle-mme. De mme, dun cadre lautre dans les agencements diptyques, triptyques ou monotypes, et entre ces agencements, entre ces dcoupes ou entre ces relevs, il y a du jeu et du rapport, continu et discontinu, temps et contre-temps, discrtion de lcart et du toucher, imminence et contigut.

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Il y a tact ou Takt en allemand, cest--dire cadence ou mesure. Il y a l mesure, cest--dire rapport et grandeur. Le rapport est dans la convenance et dans lcartement, la grandeur est dans la clture et la distance. La mesure est la cadence de lun en lautre, lombre et la lumire, le commencement et la fin. Cette mesure est elle-mme sans mesure: elle passe toute mesure, elle est dans le passage mme, tranche, tnue comme le passage et le partage. La mesure sans mesure est le consentement il y a. Non pas lacceptation de tout ce quil y a, mais le consentement ceci, quil y a et cela mme est la mesure ou la rgle pour savoir ce quon doit ou non accepter. Cest la mesure ou la rgle de ce qui reste sans mesure: quil y a. Ce quil y a, toutes les choses, tout cela a couleur et figure. Mais quil y a, cest blanc et gris, cest le-commencement-la-fin de toutes choses.
Si le verbe de la peinture tait: consentir ? Son verbe, cest--dire son acte, non pas son mot magique, ni son nom plus ou moins sacr, mais au contraire ce tranchant absolu du verbe sur le nom, qui casse la signification, qui brise la constante rfrentielle? Le rfrent dun nom est un sujet, ou une substance, le rfrent dun adjectif est une qualit dune substance, et par l mme il est encore substantiel. Mais le rfrent dun verbe est une action, qui nest pas un tat, ou qui est au moins laction de maintenir ltat, de persvrer dans ltre, quand il nest pas laction de sortir ltre de soi, de lexister ou de lexciter. Laction est toujours transitive. II ny a pas de verbe intransitif. Aucun, et pas mme le verbe tre. Et peut-tre surtout pas lui. Consentir : non pas se rsigner, non pas subir, non pas accorder par lassitude ou par passivit. Pas non plus entrer dans un consensus. Mais admettre quil y ait un cart : celui de langoisse que tu dis, de cette angoisse que chacun dit et perd en la disant, et pourtant, pas dangoisse, ou langoisse elle-mme aussitt ouverte en autre chose, devenue passage. Consentir cela: son propre geste en tant quil va de soi, quil va plus loin ou quil va simplement ailleurs quaucune volont naura pu le faire aller, et pourtant pas abandonn ou bien, abandonn de manire trs particulire: sa propre exactitude.

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Lexactitude na rien voir avec la prcision. La prcision approche indfiniment, elle est une affaire de reproduction, de rcupration, dapproximation. Lexactitude est absolue ou nest rien. Elle est affaire de surgissement, dinstant. II me semble que nous pourrions dire: nous consentons lexactitude. Ce nest pas la mme exactitude, celle qui est peinture et celle qui est criture, assurment et surtout, il ny a aucune exactitude de lune lautre, aucune phrase exacte sur la peinture, aucune peinture exacte sur la phrase. Mais nous con-sentons pourtant de mme la mme exactitude (cest--dire aussi que nous y consentons, nous ladmettons ensemble et de mme faon). Nous consentons lexactitude, parce que celle-ci nest rien quon puisse commander, ni matriser: on ne peut quy consentir (et on ne peut consentir, en gnral, qu cela mme, lexact). On ne peut sen approcher. On ne peut quy tre. (Pourtant, tout le travail consiste sen approcher, nen approchant jamais, approchant pourtant par une lente limination de toute tentative dapprocher. La patience de la peinture est dcarter toute approche, pour laisser la chose souvrir). Klee a dit un jour qucrire et dessiner taient la mme chose. Cest parler du point de vue de lexactitude en la traitant pourtant comme une proximit acheve, comme une extrme prcision: cest donc faux. La vrit de lexactitude, et du consentement, cest que ce nest pas la mme chose, et quaucun art nest le mme quun autre (et que lart est ce prix).

Consentir lexact: ce serait pour moi, aujourdhui, le mot de la peinture comme sil nonait ainsi le bord de lcriture, le bord de la trace du dire.
De fait, cela revient dire en ce sens que rien ne doit subsister qui ne soit exactement dit, et que rien nexiste qui ne le soit. Car ce qui nest pas dit nexiste pas, et ce qui nest pas dit avec exactitude nest pas dit du tout. Mais dire avec exactitude, cest aller jusquau bout du dire jusqu sa fin, jusqu son commencement. Cest mettre le doigt du dire sur le bord de la peinture. Cest alors taire, ou se taire mais en ce sens exact o

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taire quelque chose, mais la taire en peinture, cest comme dire cette chose. Non pas la dire en un autre langage: mais la dire au revers du langage, trs exactement. Ne pas la dire, donc, mais dire tout, la dire toute, ladmettre sans rserve et sans arrire-monde.

La peinture, ce quon appelle ainsi, serait dabord cela et le serait aussi dans lcriture: glisse dans lcriture jusqu son extrmit, plus ancienne son geste que son geste mme. Ce serait leau de lcriture, leau de lencre, lencre qui se perd dans son eau, lcriture comme la limite insensible de lencre et de leau.
Ce que tu dois taire, tu dois le dire. Tu dois le dire jusqu linsensible, dans linsensible mme. Quest-ce donc que ce sens quon ne sent plus et qui ne sent plus que son propre vanouissement dans lvidence? Tu dois le dire jusqu lextrmit, jusqu son excs et jusquau blanc, jusquau gris du dire.

Tu dois consentir tout dire, parce que tout est dit. Tout est dit parce que tout sarticule dun il y a. Mais tout il y a snonce dun blanc, ou snonce blanc-blanc-ou-gris. De tout ce qui est dit ainsi, et qui est le tout, de tout ce quil y a, il ny a pas de totalit. Tout lil y a nest que chaque fois, ici et maintenant, chaque fois espac du tout, de toute totalit possible.
Consentir: sentir avec. Sentir chaque fois avec cette fois-l. tre sur le seuil qui spare cette fois de tout autre fois, et qui fait leur rapport, leur commune mesure. Consentir cet tre, cest--dire ce pas sur le seuil. Autrement dit encore: consentir sentir linsensible ouverture de ltre-l, ici et maintenant.

Texte publi dans le catalogue de lexposition de Susanna Fritscher au Centre dart Contemporain dIvry le Credac en 1994.

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Pr- ou post-face surface peut-tre, ddicace en tout cas, pour ce texte en 2012.

Ctait jai vrifi en 1994, il y a donc 18 ans jai calcul. Cest un bel ge pour une jeune fille, un jeune homme. Mais pour un texte? Je ne me prononcerai pas, bien entendu. Au reste, jvite de vraiment relire celui-ci. Jentrevois que je pourrais tre mcontent ici ou l. Par exemple ceci, piqu au hasard: si le verbe de la peinture tait: consentir cela ne sentirait-il pas laffterie? On pourrait trouver l une pose dabsolu qui agace. Je ne rcuse pas le motif du consentement tel que je lemployais, mais le tour faussement inspir de cette phrase.
Faussement? aprs tout, ce nest mme pas sr! Et je ne suis pas l pour discuter avec moi-mme. Si Susanna veut republier ce texte, elle a de bonnes raisons et cela suffit me faire consentir sans rserves. Au demeurant je nai rien de capital, rien dessentiel redire pas plus au sens de reprocher qu celui de dire nouveau. Rien dire de neuf non pas parce que Susanna naurait rien fait de neuf: elle na pas cess dinnover, cest--dire dans son cas de dplacer par millimtres, par couches inframinces (pour user du mot duchampien), par passages lgers, dplacements lents et subtils de dplacer sur place la transparence quelle mettait en jeu, le blanc. Mais justement parce quelle na pas cess dinnover en douceur dans le mme blanc. Non pas dans la mme blancheur, mais dans le blanc: dans sa craie, dans son linge, dans son lait, sa neige, sa puissance albescente, opaline. Elle la fait plus arien, plus ostensiblement translucide et tremblant oui, voil peut-tre un mot bien venu, le blanc tremblant de Susanna Fritscher. Plus napp, plus enlev, plus rayonnant ou lumineux, plus color parfois ou plus humide, ou plus fragile. Mais enfin cest toujours lui, cest toujours elle. Et par consquent cela me reconduit mon point de dpart, ce blanc de titre qui stait impos (impos, oui, imprieux, presque implacable). Et qui me signifiait, plus que je ne le laissais entendre, que non le titre seul mais tout le discours devrait rester blanc.

Cela ne voudrait pas dire muet. Mais silencieux, parlant la parole du silence, dune voix de silence. Et qui serait aussi parole de consentement,

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comme lnonce la maxime: qui ne dit mot consent. Car ce qui ne peut manquer dtre enjoint qui crit sur des choses de lart, ce qui ne peut pas ne pas lappeler, linviter, lentraner, cest un certain silence, cest une certaine parole de silence. Non pas tout uniment se taire, mais parler dans un dessaisissement de discours, de sens, de matrise. Ne pas interposer un discours entre la chose la chose dite dart et nous (ses amateurs, ses amis, ses aimants). Mais laisser sourdre une parole depuis la chose mme: depuis le blanc, le tremblant, le troublant.
Ce qui trouble en effet cest que le blanc soit autant ingal lui-mme, aussi dmultipli dans ses incidences, dans ses profondeurs, dans ses consistances. Quil soit tout la fois aussi labile, languide, immobile et frmissant. Fixe et fuyant. Continu, insistant, drob, dissip, dissmin. Vague, vaporeux, pur, trac. Ce qui trouble est lalliance des contraires qui sont tous siens et qui pourtant ne sont ni des contraires, ni des allis mais simplement lui-mme.

Lui-mme qui est un autre, comme tout le monde. Qui donc est un je, oui, cest lui le sujet. Pensiez-vous que ce ft Susanna? non, cest le blanc, cest le troublant limpide, le robuste tremblant qui est le sujet. Voyez: il vient, il traverse, il ouvre lespace et il loccupe. Il mesure toutes choses. Il donne voir, perte de vue. Il se drobe, il fait voir trs ouvertement comment il garde son secret. Il fait comprendre que ce nest pas un secret, cest son vidence. Serait-ce peut-tre a quon appelle de lart? Que quelque chose ici une teinte, l une ligne, ailleurs un reflet, une note, une saveur entre dcidment en scne titre de sujet. Et que nous y consentions.
Moi, je suis l. Qui a parl?

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a blank for a title Jean-Luc Nancy

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A blank for a title and perhaps that is how it begins. What? We cannot say that. We cannot begin by saying that it is beginning. We cannot even say at the beginning that it is beginning. When we say that, when we say it is beginning, it has already begun and has already finished beginning: it has begun to finish. We cannot say where it begins, or when which is the same thing the same thing in space-time that we cannot say. However this does not mean that we would have to remain silent, or that the blank of the title would correspond to the mesmerising religious experience of entering a shrine. It does not mean that we have to reserve or preserve the secret of this beginning and of the end of this beginning of this end that begins in the beginning long before the beginning itself begins, or of the end that begins the beginning, that initiates its opening. This does not mean that there would be a mysterious silence or that we would have to sit and contemplate in silence. For there is nothing here, nothing that could take place, either in the space-time of the world or outside of it, as if in some other world beyond this one. There is is all that there is, the taking-place itself. This takingplace is not a thing; it is the beginning-and-end of something. It is there is itself and in person; in other words: no-one and nothing else, but the thing itself, the appearing that merges the thing in itself and the thing agrees to this. We cannot say it because there is nothing to be said: nothing at all, nothing of what would be the unity of substance and form, of surface and foundation, of beginning and end, and so too, nothing as regards any part of a whole that absents itself within presence. We cannot even say that we cannot say it. If someone came and said here and now that we cannot say it, they would need to have come from somewhere else and have

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already said, or heard someone else say, what we can and cannot say. This person would have to know something about this world and about another world, about this meaning and another meaning, about this saying and another saying, one that would consist of remaining silent.

Here and now, however, no-one has come. It only comes, and it begins. It finishes precisely by coming from somewhere else and by moving ahead into the past. Even the past is past (it has as much finished finishing as it has finished beginning); in other words, nothing has come to pass and we cannot even say that nothing has yet come to pass since there is no space-time for such a not yet. There has been no vigil, no waiting, no preparation, no inception, no promise, no anguish. Nor, too, has there been anything about which we could remain silent, since there is nothing there about which we could either speak of or remain silent about. There is no there, no over there, hidden, lost, absent. There is no absence. Or perhaps, there is the very presence of absence. And it is for precisely this reason that we cannot say we cannot say that. There is neither the impossibility of speaking nor the obligation to remain silent. This means there is no aphasia, no ecstasy, no inhumanity, no religion. There is the fact that it begins and this alone: the beginning here-and-now, no elsewhere, past or future; through which the here-and-now is created. There is no silencing it and no saying it, as if before any intention to speak on my part there was something there, set down there, like an inert or formless thing simply waiting to be taken and be moulded into signification. There is no hidden meaning, no machine constructed to express this. Here, the meaning is set up quite differently: like evidence, like the evidence of something that shows itself by speaking of itself, that speaks of itself by showing itself.
There is nothing to say: there is the beginning and thus, at the same time, in the blank of the title, the thing and the saying and their there is. The there is and the at the same time of the thing and of its saying meaning as existence. There is no saying in this sense; but there is the simultaneity of saying and the thing. This expression is itself both saying and the thing: the utterance of a presentation, the presentation of an utterance. There is not the thing, on the one hand, and saying, on the other. The taking-place of the thing, its beginning-and-end, is both saying and the thing itself. It is the same thing, but different in itself.

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This time, then, let us say, a blank for a title. This time, meaning on the occasion of certain paintings by Susanna Fritscher. The occasion, the encounter, something that has neither beginning nor end, something located wholly in the moment, one beat between two series, between thing and saying, between place and place. The beat of an opening, or overture in the musical sense of the term: one part that holds back the whole, from which the beginning draws its theme, a cadence or measure held back from any succession, one not measured in terms of continuity, one that has to break with continuity before it can continue. A blank for a title is no more a sentence than a silence. It is certainly not a well-formed phrase; it lacks proper syntax and, as such, meaning. Yet for all that, it is not a mystery; it is not something that harbours a different meaning for the initiated, for the visionary or for the seer. It is a beginning and how can anyone already be initiated at the very beginning? It is the beginning of saying and thing, each one a blank for a title: neither of which designates nor refers to one another. Neither one of which making sense, yet each saying something that makes perfect sense: look, there is. When there is a title, one of two things must have come before it: either the thing-thing, within which something would have begun something, initiated something in the sense of proposing or evoking; either that, or the saying-thing, within which there would be some indication or signification from which the thing can draw its momentum. Here, however, neither of these has begun; both have finished together, at the intersection of a painting and an intention, at this intersection about which there is nothing to paint, nor anything to say, and which effects the opening of both things, or rather the opening of that which separates them: the very interplay of the intersection. It is precisely at this opening that each thing opens for itself as with the other; at the shared beat of a white blank for a title. A blank for a title does not function as a title so as to be a substitute for the title that Susanna Fritscher did not provide. (We should note that this conjunction can be read in two ways: either in terms of the absence of a title or the absence as a title. The fact that Susanna Fritscher does not provide a title for any of these works could mean that the title is being kept a secret, or that the absence of a title, the blank for a title, is itself the title. Perhaps painting always gives absence to the title, and writing gives a title to absence.)

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It is neither a substitute for a title, nor a title by default. This indicates (but does not indicate), this exposes (but without showing) the absence itself as the beginning of the thing. Painting as the beginning of the thing. Painting comes into play where titles end, at least if the role of a title is to say what this painting is, where it comes from, where it is going, what it means. (As we know, however, this is not the case; titles never say anything other than their own intersection with the painting, which, for its part, says nothing either but simply skirts around the edges of titles, touching them as it withdraws. In this sense, all titles are blank, are painted blanks. And the same goes for the titles of written things.) A blank for a title does not take the place of an absent title. It neither evokes nor mimics any hidden meaning, withheld by Susanna Fritscher or by anyone else. If, despite everything, it did take the place of something, this could only be Susanna Fritschers name. But nothing can take the place of a name, a proper noun, there is nothing, there is no place. The place of a proper noun is merely the space-time of a beginning, the spacing of time, the time of a spacing: the birth of this woman. There is ..., then, just as easily takes her place, by which I mean, the place of the woman who paints the canvases; the place of her gesture of painting. Her gesture of touching the canvas and the paint, of touching the canvas with the paint, of the gesture through which paint touches itself, without beginning or end, merely the beginning and end of the paint, sweeping along itself, sliding smoothly over itself, through co-ordinating layers, on top of each other, outwardly touching through all that is inward. And yet, despite all this, it does act as a title. For a title is neither a proper noun nor a common noun. It does not signify, any more than it designates. The title is not a sign. On the contrary. The title is always a gap, an aperture in the thing, the mark of a blank space between the thing and itself: its beginning and its end, the space through which it opens itself and holds itself open. The title says nothing: it indicates that everything or nothing can be said. The title does nothing more than touch upon the thing closed in on itself, upon the closure that is needed so that it can open, so that there can be an opening. The title opens and closes with a single gesture: the overture. There is something: it begins. There is this is the title itself, the title of all titles and the blank for a title there is belongs both to saying and the

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thing without corresponding to either. There is is common to saying and to the thing, which have, nevertheless, nothing in common. It lies be tween them; it is exactly in-between, the division between saying and the thing; their comings-and-goings between each other. Being in saying, and saying in being, outside one another, touching one another, one beginning where the other finishes, beginning and ending one another. Something reaches the very limit of saying, saying nothing, bringing an end to saying before it has begun. A thing speaks of its own beginning, does not speak, bringing this beginning to an end, beginning to be in this end. No cause nor creation, no reason nor solid ground from which to proceed: merely a gesture, a passage, a flow sustained, smoothed over, advanced, immobilised upon itself. Merely a technique, that is, an art that continually, discreetly, passes by the thing, passes into it, through it, brushing against the thing, always at the limit, but at the limit that unfolds without limits.

We can call this painting. The word certainly helps, but also poses a problem: for what does it mean to paint? It is not representation, nor covering a surface; rather, it is to touch upon the absolute of a there is, without end nor beginning. A thing agrees to exist: it occupies its place, the place where it takes place; it makes sense only by opening this place. To paint is to agree to this agreement. It is not to speak of the act of this taking-place, nor to hold signification in check. To paint is to agree to the gap that deposes and exposes the thing. It is the dual movement of losing itself, in itself, and opening onto the outside, of losing itself by opening itself, of opening what is lost to its very loss. Its loss is its opening: which is not, strictly speaking, a loss, since there is nothing to be won nor gained. But to give oneself over the abyss is in itself an opening. It opens this the thing to itself, layer upon staggered layer, moving between them in such a way that nothing is left but the presence that conceals itself by constituting a surface. We could say that it appears. That it appears rather than being an appearance, and that it has already turned back in upon itself, has already finished appearing. The opening opens nothing and opens onto nothing, neither density nor depth. Depth too is a blank. The opening opens both that which remains obstinately closed in the opening itself, and that which is already open,

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which is always already half-open. This is why it finishes the beginning and begins the end. There is nothing playful in this, no aimless rattling. It is the flip side of the spoken. It is the patience of agreeing to exist. Grey yields to white, which, in turn, yields to grey, each the beginning and end of the other, each giving itself to the other. Between them is merging and rupture, division and nothing else. Yet this division divides nothing; it does not distribute nor allocate. It is neither an exchange nor a partition. Rather, it is the division of the same among the same, difference itself, distinction as a common desire, a common attraction. The communality generated by their agreeing to differ from each other is what draws white to grey, and grey to white. Such difference, however, is largely imperceptible, each merely constituting the limit of the other. Each persists in the other, imperceptibly, indefinitely and loses itself therein.
How are we to agree to the imperceptible? How can we get a sense of what is imperceptible and harmonise with it, discover its rhythm? What is imperceptible must become perceptible, imperceptibly perceptible: not disdain, withdrawal nor indifference, but, in some way, the act of perceiving itself, suspended upon itself; opened upon itself. The grey-white interior of perception. In truth, we cannot speak of grey nor of white, any more than we can speak here of support, surface, painting, motif or figure. Grey and white are merely the twin poles of this flowing of light through which there is light (black is a different kind of light, one that has no part in all this: the light of truth is its abyss). Grey and white are the-beginning-the-end of appearing. Therefore, between them there is only the discontinuity of continuity, the event of being: the fact that there is only the event and that the event is not. Here, grey and white cannot be understood as the names of colours or tones or as the result or resolution thereof. Colour is quite simply absent. There is nothing remotely like colour here, insofar as colour is what belongs to a surface irrespective of its dimensions. More precisely, there are only dimensions. There is only measure and relation. Thus, since a surface without colour is impossible, we can say that there is no surface here. Or we could say that there is pure depth or that there is pure dimension. Or what amounts to much the same thing; opening and spacing. As in water, there is simultaneous opening and closing into itself. Equally, from one frame to another of the diptych, triptych or monotype

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and between these arrangements, between these cuts, between these sketches, there is both play and relation, continuity and discontinuity, time and counter-time, the discretion of distance and intimacy, immediacy and contiguity. There is tact, or in German Takt rhythm and the measured beat of time.

There is measure, that is, relation and magnitude. The relation lies in affinity and distance, the magnitude in closure and distance. Measure is the rhythm between them, between shadow and light, beginning and end. Yet this is itself without measure: it surpasses all measure, lying in the very site of this passage, severed, held like transition and division. The measure without measure is in fact an agreement to there is. This is not the acceptance of everything that there is, but rather the agreement that there is and that the latter is the measure or the rule for knowing what we must or must not accept. It is the measure or the rule for that which has no measure: that there is. What there is all of it has colour and form. But that there is this is white and grey, the-beginning-the-end of everything. And if the action of painting were to agree?
This verb, this act, not its magic word, nor its sacred name; on the contrary, this absolute severance of the verb from the noun, a severance that ruptures signification, that shatters any referential constant. The referent of a noun is a subject or a substance; the referent of an adjective is a quality of a substance and thus remains substantial. However, the referent of a verb is an action, which is not a state; it is in the very least the action of maintaining a state, of persevering with being (when it is not the action of stepping outside of oneself, of the act of existing or creating excitement). Action is always transitive. There is no intransitive verb. None, not even the verb to be. Perhaps, above all, not the verb to be. To agree does not mean to resign oneself, to submit, or go along with something out of weariness or passivity. Nor does it mean to agree to a consensus. But it does mean admitting there is a gap, one of anguish, the anguish that you speak of, the anguish that we all speak of and dispel by doing so; and yet, not anguish, or anguish itself immediately opened into something else, a transition.

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To agree to this: to its own gesture insofar as it goes without saying, insofar as it goes much further or simply goes somewhere else to which no act of will could have forced it to go. And yet not abandoned, or if abandoned, then abandoned in the very precise sense of being abandoned to its own exactitude. Exactitude is not the same thing as precision. Precision is indefinite, a matter of reproduction, of recuperation, of approximation. Exactitude is absolute or is nothing at all. It is a matter of arising, of the instant. We could put it this way: we agree to exactitude. The exactitude of painting and the exactitude of writing are assuredly not the same thing and above all there is no exactitude between them, there is no exact phrase that matches the painting, no exact painting that matches the phrase. All the same, we can still agree that it is the same exactitude (that is, by agreeing to this, we allow both of them together and in the same way). We agree to exactitude since it is not something that can be commanded or controlled: we can only agree to it (and we can only agree in general to that which is exact). We cannot approach it. We can only be there. (Nevertheless, our work consists in approaching it, in never approaching it, in approaching it by the slow elimination of every attempt at approach. The patience of painting is to remove any approach, to allow the thing to open). Klee once said that writing and drawing were the same thing. This is to speak from the perspective of exactitude while actually treating it like true proximity, an extreme precision; it is, therefore, false. The truth of exactitude and of agreement is that they are not the same thing and that no art is the same as any other (and such is the price of art). To agree to the exact: this would mean for me, here, today the word of painting, as if this could express the very limit of writing, the limit of the trace of what is said. In fact, this amounts to saying in the sense that nothing should remain that is not said exactly and that nothing exists but that which is said exactly. For that which is not said does not exist, and that which is not said exactly is not said at all.

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To speak with exactitude, however, is to go right to the limit of saying right to its end, right to its beginning. It is to put your finger of what is being said at the limit of painting. As such, it means to be silent or to fall silent in the exact sense of keeping something quiet, keeping quiet about it in painting is the same thing as saying it. Not saying it in another Ianguage, but saying it on the flip side of Ianguage. Not saying it, then, but saying everything, saying everything about it, admitting it unreservedly and without any back-world. Thus, that which we are calling painting, would, from the outset, be what has slipped into writing, right up to its very limit, older than the gesture that defines it. This would be the water of writing, inky water, ink that is lost in water, writing as the imperceptible limit of ink and water. Whereof you cannot speak, thereof you must tell. You must say it, right up to the point of imperceptibility; say it from within the imperceptible itself. What, then, is this sense that we no longer sense? This sense that means nothing more than its own disappearance into evidence? You have to go on saying it, right up to the limit, to excess and to that which is blank, right up to the grey of what is said. You have to agree to say everything because everything is said. Everything is said because everything is articulated from a there is. But every there is is expressed from a blank or expresses a blank grey-or-white. So far as everything that is thus said is concerned and hence so far as everything is concerned, the whole of what there is there is no totality. Every there is is, each time, here and now, is merely a particular instance of the whole, of every possible totality. To agree or to consent: to feel with. Feeling each time with that particular time. To stand on the threshold that separates that particular time from every other, the threshold that draws them together, that gives them common measure. To agree to this way of being, to this step over the threshold. Put somewhat differently: to agree to feel the imperceptible opening of existence, here and now. Text published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition by Susanna Fritscher at the Centre dart Contemporain dIvry le Credac in 1994.

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Preface or postface perhaps even surface but in any case, a dedication for this text in 2012. It was I checked in 1994; eighteen years ago I worked it out. A fine age for a young woman or a young man. But for a text? I am not going to tell you my opinion of course. Besides, I did not really re-read it. I have a feeling that I might not be too happy with some of it. A random example: And if the action of painting were to agree? hard to not judge this as affectation. It could be perceived as a rather irritating absolute position. I do not object to the motif of agreeing I used at the time, but to the turn that this phrase deceptively inspires. Deceptively? Indeed, I am not even sure about that. And I am not here to discuss things with myself. If Susanna wants to republish the text she will have good reasons for doing so and all I have to do is agree unreservedly. In fact I have nothing to add, nothing important to change no more in the sense of reproach than in the sense of saying in different way. I have nothing new to say, yet this is not because Susanna has not created anything new: she has never stopped innovating. Here, this means moving millimetre by millimetre, ultrathin (to use the Duchampian term) by ultrathin layer, via miniscule transitions, slow and subtle transfers manipulating transparency in this place, the blank, the white. It is exactly because she has quietly continued innovating within the same white. Not within the same whiteness but within white: in her chalk, bedlinen, milk, snow, her albescent, iridescent power. Now her work is more aerial, more visibly translucent and trembling perhaps that is the right expression the trembling white of Susanna Fritscher. More glazed, more vibrant, more radiant or luminous, sometimes more colourful or more humid, more fragile. But in the end, it is always Susanna, she is always herself. Which brings me back to my point of departure, to this blank for a title which was imposed itself upon me (yes imposed, imperious, almost implacable). And which I understood to mean more than I implied at the time that not only the title, but the entire discourse was to remain blank. Which is not the same thing as being dumb. It means being silent, speaking the words of silence, with a silent voice. And would also be the

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words of agreement, as stated by the maxim: to say nothing is tacit agreement. A certain silence; a certain spoken silence: this is what is asked of those who write about art, that which cannot but be called upon, invited, led. It is not that we all simply remain silent, but that we speak within a diminishing of discourse, of meaning, of mastery. To not position discourse between the thing the thing said of art and ourselves (the admirers, friends, lovers of art). Instead to allow the spoken word to rise up out of the thing itself: from the blank, the trembling, the troubling.

Indeed, what troubles us is the fact that the blank is as changeable to itself, as it is multiplied in its incidences, in its depths, in its consistencies. Which are simultaneously unstable, languid, immobile and quivering. Fixed and fleeting. Continued, insistent, concealed, dispersed, diffused. Vague, vaporous, purged, traced. What troubles us is the alliance between opposites that is completely its own and yet these are not opposites, nor allies; it is simply itself. Itself, which is another, as is everyone. And this I: yes, it is the subject. Do you think this is Susanna? No, it is the blank; it is the clear troubling, the solid trembling that is the subject. Take a look: it comes; it crosses; it opens the space and occupies it. It measures everything. It gives us something to look at, as far as we can see. It conceals; it displays very openly how it keeps its secret. It makes us understand that it is not a secret; it is its evidence. Perhaps this is what we call art? That something here a colour, there a line, elsewhere a reflection, a note, a flavour makes its forceful entrance as the subject. And we agree to this. Im here. Who said that?

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SPEKTRUM 4 FILM, 2011 SUSANNA FRITSCHER

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