Collecting the alphabet

Collecting the alphabet


The alphabet forms the new focus of several projects of Flemish artist Kelly Schacht (1983). Lately she investigates the functionality of language and monstration. She has established her own abecedary. An abecedary can be described as a kind of poem of which the successive lines begin with the successive letters of the alphabet. The establisment of this alphabet is situated in Schacht’s quest as an artist to have a voice in order to speak. Therefore she looks for the alphabet, a list of words and their – conceptual – interpretation. An abecedary is often used as a medium to learn the alphabet to a child, to learn a layman sing or to help stutterers overcome their disability.

For her alphabet Schacht draws on the Book of Questions by Edmon Jabès and the Visual Alphabet by Gilles Deleuze. She cuts into the fabric of the alphabet and produces mises en scène of several letters and gives them the status of full-fledged characters. This abecedarium is and will be worked out in various ways visually in several exhibitions and projects. An exhibition at Meessen De Clercq is the starting point followed by a solo exhibition at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam (May 2015).

The alphabet will be concluded with S for Song, created specially for Beaufort Beyond Borders this upcoming summer. The work consists of a collection of sentences coming from existing songs of pop history. This new text will be realised on several containers which are effectively used for transport. This way, these containers form a collection of different sentences – a visual score – that is distributed and transported over different paths, either by shipping, road transport, or railway. Each phrase is graphically worked out and painted on the sidewall of a container. The different containers form together a new song. Since each sentence derives from a different source, a dialogue is created between those containers. Collected and created in a new form by Schacht the song starts a new journey, first as a whole, subsequently as diverse parts. The remains of the song are only kept in your mind and memory. Imagination will do the rest.

Unfortunately S for Song has never been realised.