Scribbled Lives Week 9—Garden of Forking Paths

This week’s topic had me stumped…until I connected it to Jorge Luis Borges’ spy story, “The Garden of Forking Paths”. Then there were so many rich directions in which to take this prompt!

In Borges’ short spy story, a British politician abandons his position to write a novel and build a labyrinth, but fails on both accounts—the novel made no chronological sense and the labyrinth was never found. It’s revealed that “the garden of forking paths” and the novel are one and the same, and that the novel’s seemingly incompatible storylines present the idea of the bifurcation, or splitting, of time, rather than space. In other words, whenever the characters come to a point at which more than one outcome is possible, both outcomes occur! This causes the narrative to branch out into multiple narrative universes, which then provide the scenarios for new bifurcations.

I’ve just returned from a workshop on using maps in art where I kept stumbling on maps of China! Interestingly, it has always been my desire to visit. However, whenever the time was right, the circumstances were wrong—political unrest, riots, the coronavirus. To go or to stay. I connected this dilemma with the theme of Borges’ story—place versus time.

Two panels, one representing place and the other time, are hinged to form a whole. Moving parts on the compass and clock represent change; they mark the multiple scenarios these movements have on outcomes. Text is written in a continuous line without lifting the pen. Although the words cannot be read, the design hangs on their meaning.

“…certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon.” Jorge Luis Borges

Mixed media. Panels built into a custom box to protect the moving parts. 28 x 28 x 3 cm (11″ x 11″ x 1.25”) closed.