Its obvious impotence provokes laughter. It is animated with great uncertainty, as its movements must be borrowed from a small, creeping animal because it is not a creature in its own right. It pretends to want nothing and advances in doodles but its darting incoherence awakens suspicion. Multiple returns scatter defences and disorientate. It exploits weaknesses and reveals its intention to dominate. It is stealing something and the feeling of deficit cannot be squared.
Gnommero is an ongoing publication assembled by Sarah Tripp and Eona McCallum. Gnommero presents artist’s and writer’s responses to Italo Calvino’s series of published lectures, Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The third issue carries works responding to Calvino’s memo on ‘exactitude’ produced by: Chin Li, Neil Davidson, Simone Hutchinson, Conal McStravick, Richard Taylor, Kate Morrell, Ruth Barker, Anthony Schrag, Eona McCallum, Louise Shelley, Kathryn Elkin, Nathalie de Briey, Laura Simpson, Thomas Walker, Giuseppe Mistretta, Giles Bailey, so, Iris Tenkink and Sarah Tripp. Gnommero – Exactitude was launched at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow as part of the What we make with words programme in December 2011. A lecture by Myrto Petsota entitled, The precise poetics of Cosmogony: Italo Calvino’s exactitude introduced Gnommero – Exactitude.
Sarah Tripp contributed the short observations, The rain and crying and Black Feather.