The Matining Codex

Each sculpture is a word in this new language. This language is recorded in this moment and in every moment. In this moment these words sit, written, on this sheet. This sheet is contextualized by its own myth.

In 10 hours, the piece Ive been working on for the last 6 months will go through a crit.
In the last couple of days Ive been convinced into and out of decisions by people whos opinions I respect. In the end, Im sticking to my guns and Ive been pining over my decisions all through this Easter weekend.
I decided to have 9 sculptures in total;
- a gold leafed, basketball-ish sized sphere with a smiley face
- dried soil with crushed pearls
- my father's barong (traditional shirt worn by all men in a wedding made from pineapple) turned into a sack, stuffed with rice
- earphones with me singing Anak by Freddie Aguilar and More Than Words by Extreme
- a basket with an airport tag
- a commissioned terra cotta pot with the potters signature on the front
- a kite
- a candle-thing in a silver pail
- and the base that these 8 sculptures sit on balanced by a Tagalog Bible.

At the front of the door I will have a Borges' quote.

"It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature."

The thing that really scares me right now is the presence of the Bible.
Its such a loaded object and I know that it has potential to over shadow the entire piece, which is why I chose to hide it in what I think is a literal, but poetic way.
This scares me because it feels gimmicky, but this being presented during a crit, I cant help but use the opportunity as a type of workshop. To test the responses.
Also, a part of me just wants to put the Bible in there and say "So what?"
My decision tomorrow will be to not reveal the Bible, but to allow people to speculate whats hidden under the base.
I believe that since I have treated each of these objects as a word, then it would be appropriate for each person to have their own experience define that word for themselves. Ive created these objects, and once they are in sight of other people, I no longer control how they may be consumed.
My link to myth, language and the codex all lay in words. Since I want the audience to treat these objects as words, the base then becomes like a sheet of paper and the allusion to a codex becomes apparent in this context. Since a Bible and a dictionary are both books, the pairings of these ideas can exist.