K-House was an installation by James Clarkson at Bloc Projects, Sheffield, commissioned by the Freelands Foundation and Site Gallery’s Platform Artist Development Programme.

‘In K-House cut out coloured metal arrows appear twisted, bent, superimposed, intertwined. These graphical signs create diagrams of unknown and probably not yet existing processes. When presented outside of the screen and Excel spreadsheets, they are now empty signifiers. Yet this temporary emptiness is perhaps what allows for the amplification of the otherwise saturated human’s attention span. Outside of the rhythm of semiocapitalism, these signs create a surplus of time, as their initial suspension of meaning is soon followed by a process of poetic (re)signification.

Clarkson’s arrows, numbers and codes surpass their assumed categories under the universal language of economy. The result is an artistic language that aligns with Franco "Bifo" Berardi, in an understanding of poetry as a linguistic political weapon. Language, through poetry, cannot be reduced to information and treated like currency, as it exceeds the field of signification. Instead of striving for generalisation, standardisation and homogeneity, the markers of logistical, data management and bureaucratic language are here able to accommodate contingent articulations and forms of difference.’

Words by by Marina Otero Verzier, Director of Research at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

Read Marina Otero Verzier’s full text on K-House here.