A digression, a not-coming-to-the-point opens the concrete to the unknown; simple shifts and interruptions lead to explorations of unforeseen realities. Digressions manifest themselves in many ways – as distraction, excursus, or detour – and are commonly deployed as a rhetorical, scientific, or literary device, but also as associative parlando or political strategy. Digressions are supposed to render narrative accounts more accessible, provide access to remote areas, divert from the topic or argumentation, disturb the flow of storytelling, increase suspense, or delay the result. The question therefore becomes: what do they distract from? Is there a current, path, red thread, or direction to lose sight of – or does the digression merely pretend to have lost sight of it?
The ICI Library Event But I Digress will let the mind wander and explore the enervating and reinvigorating aspects of digression in the context of the ICI’s current research focus ERRANS. The event will consist of a staged reading delving into the manifold ways of literary digression and, in its second half, the opening of an exhibition of artworks by Jochen Flinzer, Jenny Keuter, Axel Malik, and Patrick Vernon. Faint pencil traces, scribbled messages, despairing lines, stitched contours, and stretching threads will continue the reflections on digression and present themselves in space or on paper, ranging from the elusive and emblematic to the raptures of minimalism. The works, mostly pen, thread, and print, reveal the polysemic play of wandering lines, contours, and forms. The artworks will be on display from 8 December 2015 – 14 January 2016 in the ICI Library. The exhibition is curated by Claudia Peppel.
Welcome: Corinna Haas and Arnd Wedemeyer
Introduction to the Exhibition: Claudia Peppel
2015
