The Lisbon Lecture

Jimmy Raskin

In 2010, Anthony Huberman’s major group exhibition, “For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there,” ended its touring engagements at Culturgest, Lisbon. The show brought together artists whose work considers curiosity and understanding as discrete and often mutually exclusive ideas, and was dedicated to “the inquisitive mind and to the pleasures of finding our way in the dark.” In the spirit of exemplifying this probing mindset, Jimmy Raskin was invited to deliver a lecture as a parallel project to his work in the exhibition, Confrontation At The Hollow Tree (Inseparability vs. Simultaneity).

The Lisbon Lecture, inspired by the exhibition’s thesis – “Embodying a spirit of playful non-knowledge, unlearning, and productive confusion”– explores the paradoxical nature of Arthur Rimbaud’s modern poetics, Roland Barthes’ notion of The Misfire (a failed poetics), and the use of the irrational dimension in language as a guiding doctrine in the work of the poet. The artist presents Rimbaud’s poems with great flair and insight, and proposes an imaginative and unique route to productive confusion.

This sixty page, limited edition volume reproduces the original lecture complete with script and diagrams illustrating Raskin’s dissections of different ways of Being. The book, further, shows how failure, as such, can be channeled to play a significant role in the creative process, and manifests certain palpable pleasures in finding one’s way in the dark.

CONTENTS

Introduction
Letter to Miguel Sequeira Wandschneider
The Cone
The Rimbaud Paradox #1
The Rimbaud Paradox #2
The Rustle and The Misfire