In ancient Rome, this Latin phrase, which means literally “Not With Words But With Things,” was used to glorify actions over talk. A couple millennia later, its last vestiges linger in an old-fashioned children’s puzzle which presents an encrypted sentence made up of objects instead of words — a rebus.
That’s what’s going on here. Words can never tell the whole story, and so there is art. Many arts. Millions of arts.
A compulsive collector and arranger of objects since I can remember, I pretty much inflicted my special magic on every interior I ever inhabited. Why speak not with words but with things? I couldn’t tell you. Now I can.
I say it is because of the powerful drive we all have to participate and contribute culture, to control and create our own environment, whether it’s dancing a ballet, shopping for clothes, watching TV, making conceptual art or playing video games. Why? Because in the lab, you need a culture to grow bacteria. And in our world world, you need culture to grow human beings. Luckily, you are an animal that can make your own.
As an artist who uses cultural relics to speak, I of course associate this cultipicitous drive with art. But it is in everything. Searching. Singing Collecting. Hoarding. Shopping. Curating. Dancing. Copying. Styling. Stealing. Mirroring. Planning. Dressing. Propagating. Learning. Organizing. Arranging. Rearranging. Tweaking. Tinkering. Building. Collaging. Decorating. Yearning. Proselytizing. Imagining. Crafting. Editing. Obsessing. It’s all cultiplicating. It’s all cultiplication. It’s all cultiplicity.
The things I make function to me not just like art works but like Masks. Mirrors. Moodboards. Tombstones. Beds. Magpie Nests. Matrixes.Vision boards. Window displays. Yard sales. Living Rooms. Lots. Evidence. Pile-ups. Histories. Fictions. Cabins. Collections. Collisions. Inventories. Inventions. Swimming Pools. Movie Stars.
These analogs are freeing but necessary, because to me the exact words don't exist. I call it cultiplicity —the powerful human drive to participate in culture, to create it and spread it. And as a person or an artist, I am obligated by my nature to do this. To cultivate and multiply, to cultiply and multivate — to cultiplicate. To create my own native habitat, a portable symbolic environment I take in my head everywhere I go. A habitat in which I can live and grow. A matrix which I create and which in turn creates me. Seeds in search of soil, flowers in search of a bed.
