ECRITUREartefacts

This is a wee novelty store packed with strange and eclectic things. In French, écriture means “writing”. In his 1953 book “Writing Degree Zero”, Roland Barthes discusses writing in terms of style, dismissing assertions of writing as neutral or blank since all writing engenders some discursive element in reflecting an individual’s worldview. In writing, Derrida saw eternal slippage and an illusory trace: writing as “différance”. This store allows interdisciplinary artist Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé to return to his first love of drawing, and to pen pithy things that get made into lovely glassware, aprons, coasters, pillows, totes, greeting cards, phone cases, and laptop sleeves. These are not-so-serious accoutrements for the serious writer. It’s the poetic monostitch refashioned into something emblematic. “Writing should be intimate,” Desmond thinks, “as with the curiosities and oddities you surround your home with. Like a handmade card in a picture frame or shells you picked up at the beach. Or the bits of poetry you wrote across a wall after you whitewashed it.”