Polyphony (2021, Edition of 1)
‘Polyphony’ is a pastoral idyll, written according to a Herculean constraint, in which the author, Christian Bök, has limited himself to using only the repertoire of letters (and symbols), accessible to his right hand when typing, by touch, on the QWERTY keyboard of a mechanical typewriter. Christian Bök has, in effect, typed out this poem by exclusively using only one of his two hands, and he has composed the work in honour of his friend, the artist Kaye Strange, who has maimed her left hand, losing some of its original, dominant sinistrality after an accident in her studio.
‘Polyphony’ celebrates the occasion of the artshow, entitled ‘PostOpPoP,’ at the Darwin Visual Arts Association (29 Oct – 13 Nov 2021), where Kaye Strange has elected to exhibit her body of work created in the period after her injury, when she has had to retrain herself to become more ambidextrous in her techniques, if not more ‘polyphoneous’ in her expression.