The Blank Page

As I was surfing the Internet (or rather trying to distract myself from the blank page in front of me), I came across this piece of video art by Israeli artist Ariel Schlesinger. It captured my inability to put a single word on the page, the enervation, the attention/inattention I was paying to the page, the feeling of being on the cusp of inspiration only to have the flash snuffed out.


As one reviewer of her work wrote way way back in 2008 (doesn’t that seem a long time ago): Schlesinger’s works are weird science for the sake of the beautifully uncanny. In Forever Young (2005), a single ash burns perpetually in a cracked ashtray at the gallery entrance. A soggy cardboard box, Zu Erinnern und Zu Vergessen (To Remember and To Forget, 2008), holds a shallow puddle of water that somehow never seeps out onto the gallery floor. Rolls of masking tape, joined – like Siamese twins – at their cardboard cores, stand on a pedestal in Untitled (Masking Tape) (2008). Doesn’t that make you want to see more? Lots of her conceptual video is online on YouTube or other sources. Check it out.