In Harvey Tulcensky’s Blue Kilometer, lines are going, forever, somewhere, or nowhere? Who knows…

They mirror the sound they make, sliding, the length of a breath, along the ruler, to never interrupt, following one’s heartbeat, moving north-south, from one pole of extreme to the other.

Some waves cross over and under those lines, rhythmically, stronger than the apparent order of the lines, smudging along the ruler and leaving traces on their passage, creating fantom-like, random inequalities. The certainty, the verticality, the order of the lines contrast with those accidental blots, connecting invisible dots, moving sideways, appearing like lost notes on a score. 

In the sustained symphony of the lines sometimes emerge unnamed forms like points, worms, hooks, question marks, default splashes of pure whiteness that distinguish themselves against this background / foreground – what’s over which? which came first? 

Vibrating streams of consciousness map across the page with ever greater intensity, we can hear them advance and cover ground – we can feel and see them moving like life, blue blood through veins drifting above the depth of the surface, with inimitable force and determination.

Sometimes the blue kilometer lets long slots of light pass through, behind itself, interrupting the flow, the valleys and peaks of inkblots that form their own patterns but always moored back to the lines, that harmonious verticality of the order that remains so irrefutable, constant, reassuring, against the randomness of those stained counterpoints.  

Infinite floods of ink, the manifest material of color and proof of a hand gesture through time, going places, vertically and horizontally – North, West, East, South like a vast, endless map of possibilities, pointing to other worlds, not yet visible, not yet drawn. These are the rules of the game.

Laetitia Wolff,  February 12, 2022