239 Things

1000 Things is a subjective encyclopedia of inspirational ideas, things, people, and events.

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Studium Generale 1000things lectures, The Hague

239 Things

  • To ingest part of Dieffenbachia Picta or Dumbcane as it is commonly known, will lead to paralysis of the mouth, lips, and tongue, causing temporary muteness.
  • The panic at being struck dumb is constricted to a mere mechanical clatter in your head.
  • Try not to ask yourself ‘When will this end?’
  • The placement of the houseplant designates a zone of potential silence, a selected frame of domestic insistence.
  • It is an icon of both latent material, chemical effect and the dissolution of language.
  • Its effect is a physiological, existential swelling.
  • Dumb paralysis becomes immobility becomes time passing, boredom or durational obstinacy.
  • Mid-afternoon, ‘downtime’, French windows.
  • Now turn away.

Juliette Blightman, Richard Birkett

a work of Blightman
a work of Richard Birkett