Repetition is a versatile tool. Kierkegaard argues that “repetition and recollection are the same movement, just in opposite directions”. Semantic satiation is a phenomenon in which a word loses meaning as a consequence of repetition. The “actuality and earnestness of existence” that is repetition pervaded within this phenomenon creates different outcomes when applied to language(s) one speaks and does not.

The work executed correlatively utilize repetition of the word -I- as a unit in different languages. By pursuing semantic satiation, in “I” deconstructed images from the act of repeating are placed on two sides of a passage in space. As meaning disappears so does function, and consequently the concept of “I”, the self, both the signifier and the signified in this case.

Ekin Cifter