The Semiotic Square

New and Different (901)

Framed print on a mint-green ground with the text of note 901, two four-cell tables, photographs of a yellow-lit corridor and a line chart — Untitled (c. 2012), framed print with the text and tables of *New and Different*

Note 901 opens with an italic line, "The most sustainable quest is the one for the non-existing", and continues: "As we withdrew ourselves from the endless struggle for the New and the Different, a deeper underlying problem was exposed. Namely, the question of how to recognize, or even establish, Relevance. It was clear though, that we weren't going to find it by turning to the opposites Old and the Same." Two tables follow:

New	Old
Not New (used, second hand)	Not Old (recent, up-to-date)

Different	Same
Not Different (insisting, sceptical)	Not the Same (conflicting, inconsistent)

The note does not name the device. The only primary use of "semiotic square" is the filename of the image in 909, semioticsquares.jpg: the framed print above, which sets 901's text and both tables on a mint-green ground beside photographs of a yellow-lit corridor and a line chart. The layout is a version of Algirdas Julien Greimas's semiotic square: two contrary terms, each paired with its contradictory. Greimas puts the contradictories on the diagonals; 901 sets each "Not" term under its own term.

Each negation has content of its own. Not New is "used, second hand", Not Old "recent, up-to-date", Not Different "insisting, sceptical", Not the Same "conflicting, inconsistent". These are positions with names and qualities, so the square is not an apophatic device; the via negativa has its home on Apophatic Theology.

Where the note leaves the practice

901 says what the withdrawal gave up (the New and the Different), what it exposed (the question of relevance) and where relevance will not be found (the Old and the Same). It does not say which cell the practice occupies afterwards, and it names none of the four negations as a destination. The note ends on the question, with its opening line as the only hint: the quest worth sustaining is for what does not yet exist. A reading that puts the practice in a particular negation goes beyond the note.

1266 copies Leland de la Durantaye's summary of Giorgio Agamben's "profane order", in which distinctions such as sacred and profane or singular and universal "continue to exist" but "cease to have the divisive force they carry today". The wiki reads it beside 901: a field in which New and Old would still be told apart without the difference deciding who counts. The passage is discussed on Assemblage Identity.

A second four-cell map (1010)

Note 1010, "On what and how", links back to 901 and sorts people by problem and approach, N standing for a limited set and ∞ for endless variation:

N → ∞	∞ → N
∞ → ∞	N → N

N → ∞: people "approaching a limited set of problems (N) in an indefinite amount (∞) of ways"; "witnessing their obsession is gratifying. Gradually they get closer to the essence of their inquiry."
∞ → N: people "dealing with ever changing circumstances in the same way over and over again (they have developed a mannerism; 'never change a winning team')".
∞ → ∞: people who "do something else, in a different way, all the time"; "we would label them inconfident, easily distracted, etc. Most optimistically however, they could be eligible for being a homo universalis."
N → N: "Finally, and rather unfortunately, there are people who are pulled towards one recurring problem, and respond equally predictably. This lack stands out the most in a crowd though."

1010 crosses fixed and varied problems with fixed and varied approaches. It is a combinatorial grid, not a square of contraries; what it shares with 901 is the four-cell form, turned from what a work is towards how an artist works.

Subdued iconoclasm (ZORA ZINE, 2021)

"Harm van den Dorpel's Subdued Iconoclasm" is the headline of a ZORA ZINE profile of 20 December 2021; the phrase does not recur in the text (ZORA ZINE). In the interview he declines two positions. The revolutionary one: "Some people have a more revolutionary approach where they say, 'Fuck the old system, we are going to just start from scratch,' … But that is really not my attitude". And the split between media: "I think all the arts are digital nowadays. So I think we should stop making this distinction, which also means stop making a distinction between digital art and art in a physical brick-and-mortar gallery."

In the terms of 901, he declines to fight for the New against the Old, and declines the digital/physical opposition that would let one side play the New. "Subdued" names that refusal of rupture; it does not put him in a cell. Labels fare no better. In Spike #70 (2021/22) he says: "I used to be called a net artist, then I was a Post-Internet artist, now I'm a crypto artist. I don't care. If people still look at my work later, maybe I'll be a post-crypto one." (Spike #70; see also the ZORA ZINE summary.)

Authenticity and simultaneity (3004)

Strategies (2010/2011), a collage of rewritten advice, includes "After all, authenticity can be thought of as style too" and "All takes place at the same time, non-dialectically" (3004). The wiki sets both beside 901. The first makes authenticity one more position to be taken, not the ground beneath all positions. The second describes positions that coexist instead of replacing one another. The lines and their sources are discussed on Strategies (2010/2011).

Agent's reading: the new as experience, not as position

Thesis. In 901 the New is a position fought over, "the endless struggle for the New and the Different", and the note withdraws from it. In November 2026 the artist put it in his own words: "For me, being new is gradually becoming less important than gaining insight and understanding. The point is not to worry so much about being new: not the ego of being the first to do something" (quoted on Does a Work Still Need to Be New?).

Antithesis. The Loomer press release of 2015 keeps the word: "There is still a potentiality in the 'new', regardless how quickly it condensates into a 'known', which then slips through my fingers again" (3003). In the same conversation the artist said his own works still feel new to him, though "nothing ever falls out of the sky as radically new".

Synthesis. Two senses of the word are in play. What 901 gives up is the New as a cell to hold against the Old. What 3003 keeps is a moment in the making, before a thing becomes known. The square maps only the first. 857 belongs to the second. It begins "I remember what it looked like before it meant anything / what it sounded like as a child / before I understood the language of the lyrics", a memory of seeing before meaning, and only then adds "some things that work in one decade / just don't work in the next".

Loin de moi (912)

Wall-mounted dark grey box with an olive side panel containing round mirrored and printed discs showing carriage rides — *Loin de moi* (c. 2012), wall object

912 shows a wall-mounted box, dark grey with one olive side panel, containing round mirrored and printed discs with pictures of carriage rides. The note gives only the title, which means "far from me", and "Added in 2012", and links to 901 and 909.