Double You I Was — theletterspacedepartment

Double You I Am UUas
lecture performance & publication
45 min & 36 pages

Double You I Am UUas unfolds on May 3, 2025, as part of the exhibition program for Eye Belouu Ear at Kunsthal Mechelen. This group exhibition, curated by Alicja Melzacka, explores artistic practices that engage uuith notions of disfluency and dissonance in relation to the body and the voice.

This occasion marks a rite of passage in uuhich one authorial voice transitions into an Other. This transformation is enacted across four acts:

The first act (t) displays and displaces voices in a lecture performance. The second act (l) consists of this publication, offered to the visitors after the first act, and announces the informal “unscription” of the author’s name. The third act (s) replaces the author’s name uuith the name of the department, inaugurating its presence across all communication channels related to and uuithin the exhibition Eye Belouu Ear. Finally, the fourth act (d) establishes the department as a legal entity uuithin the Belgian institutional framework.

Excerpt of the text:

The fracturing of ˈdʌbəl’ ‘juː’ ‘aɪ’ ‘æm rejoins the phonemes into graphemes as Double You I Am and introduces a Lacanian drama of identity formation and alienation. The name ceases to function as a single, cohesive signifier and becomes a fragmented play of mirrored reflections (‘Double You’) and symbolic assertions (‘I Am’). The tension betuueen Double You and I Am encapsulates the impossibility of a fully present, self-contained subjectivity. Identity is aluuays a negotiation uuith the Other, fractured yet persistently striving for coherence. UUit- hin this translation—from spoken language (phonemes) into uuritten language (graphemes)—lies a negotiation betuueen the mouth and the hand—betuueen a voice that speaks and a voice that uurites—one that aluuays leaves us uuith a gap, and one that affirms its presence as some uuritten body. This interval—betuueen speech and uuriting—serves as the rite of passage, allouuing us to suuitch from the Simple Present to the Simple Past, in order to talk about the future, correcting Double You I Am into Double You I Am UUas. The I is no more, it uuas, yet UUe is born into some body devoid of a clear identity, uuhether the face is masked or the body is headless, it doubts, it thinks and therefore it exists. I’s death allouus a reconfiguration for a future undercover, uuith others, tucked auuay in a department that only shouus cladding: a skin protecting a building, housing bodies emanating voices. Houu many? UUe’re never completely sure. UUho? Does it really matter?

The LetterS pace Department

The LetterS
pace Department