Opens July 23, 2025

about the show:

The Xenotext: “language is a virus” celebrates the invisible legacy of empathy encoded into a ‘love-poem,’ poised to outlive the lifetime of the Sun.

After 25 years, Christian Bök has completed The Xenotext, a dialogue of ‘sonnets’ implanted into the genome of a deathless bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, which preserves the poems “Orpheus” and “Eurydice” for an eternity, while emitting a rosy glow.

“The Xenotext,” Bök writes, “strives to preserve a motif of lost love so that we might imagine the endurance of our greatest thoughts beyond the doom of our ephemeral existence.”

While authored by Bök, The Xenotext has not reached its completion without the unsummable expression of love from others. The Xenotext: “language is a virus” honors ten of these artists and poets: Adam Dickinson, Ana María Caballero, Bassil Taleb, Danielle King, Gregory Betts, Kalen Iwamoto, Nick Thurston, Nasser Hussain, Sarah Ridgley, and Sasha Stiles, all of whom have supported Bök during his endeavour. Any poem that outlives its creator must carry with it a deeper sense of connection with the past, looking forward to the future, all with a humbling awareness that we cannot do our work alone.

Opens July 23, 2025 at theVERSEverse gallery on objkt.com