What if language was never invented to communicate? I ask Paul Woodford from THE DEPARTMENT OF VISUAL PARADOX AND PATAPHYSICAL RESEARCH about his findings. If you believe communication is poetry, the Department has evidence to the contrary—and has yet to find a communicative use for proving it. More than that: does language exist as we perceive it, or does it take leave of the mind the moment we start reading?
Laura Kerr: Paul, what evidence would convince you that language had been invented for some entirely different purpose?
Paul Woodford: The Department, as a whole, has always considered the possibility that language was originally invented to prevent communication. I offer political rhetoric, advertising and certain forms of art criticism as supporting evidence. These forms of communication demonstrate that language can operate remarkably well while communicating remarkably little… and language used for exchanging information, perhaps represents an unfortunate technical malfunction… But what if language never did have an original purpose? What if communication was simply an accidental property discovered after language had established itself? The Department has provisionally classified meaning as a by-product of linguistic friction, particularly when words encounter other words with which they have no previous acquaintance. Poetry appears especially adept at engineering such encounters. Of course, the most convincing evidence would be a sentence that performed its original purpose perfectly while remaining entirely incomprehensible.
L: I have long admired your ability to dispense with meaningful jargon. You seem to know which words have outlived their purpose yet continue to exist. Who do you feel has jurisdiction over a meaning once it has been released into conversation?
P: The short answer is nobody. Although, the word jurisdiction assumes that meaning occupies a territory and that somebody possesses the authority to administer it… and an extraordinary number of people appear to have appointed themselves to that position. However, I think that meaning is not simply released into conversation. It is produced through an encounter. The Department regards meaning less as property than as an event that is temporarily assembled between participants. Of course, this means the Department cannot claim exclusive authority over its own findings. We have therefore declared all conclusions provisional and even this declaration itself has subsequently been challenged.
L: I have always said that the brilliant turn comes when language ceases to be a neutral instrument and becomes a struggle over power. Or perhaps it was Lewis Carroll who said it. Same difference. Which, that said, is it?
P: Humpty Dumpty understood the situation perfectly. His difficulty was mistaking an elevated position for a secure one. His authority over language depended not simply on his ability to impose meaning, but on the circumstances that allowed others to accept it… but he failed to see that his authority was dependent on the conditions that sustain it. The wall wasn’t merely somewhere to sit… it was the institutional structure supporting his linguistic ambition. With that in mind, the Department suspects that what passes for neutrality is simply an authority that has forgotten the precariousness of its position. So, one has to ask: was language ever neutral, or is neutrality the name given to assumptions that have become sufficiently established so as to escape examination? The Department’s Pataphysical Collider attempts to expose these assumptions by bringing seemingly incompatible systems of representation into collision. The resulting residues frequently contain contradictions, ironies and megabeliefs: propositions whose authority has outgrown their evidence. I think that experimental poetry can perform a similar operation by interrupting the familiar arrangements through which language acquires authority. Unfortunately, the experimental can become just as institutionalised as the conventions it challenges. Even rebellion can become grammatically correct. The Department is now investigating its own terminology and the initial findings are troubling.
L: When I was a child, we played a game called 20 Questions. Marvellously long. We made up rules and penalties, so it was a good lesson in withstanding interrogation (a useful skill by today’s standards). If every answer must take the form of a question, what constitutes a refusal to answer?
P: Wouldn’t a refusal first have to recognise the authority of the question it intended to refuse?
And if I answered with another question, would I be refusing the original or extending its jurisdiction?
Could an interrogator distinguish between an answer disguised as a question and a question disguised as an answer?
And if every question establishes the conditions under which an answer becomes permissible, who authorised the interrogator?
More importantly, Laura, when did this interview become an interrogation?
And why have I only just noticed?
L: I was pleased to learn that your Department has established that language had a life before the poet arrived. Does that mean the poet is a late arrival, an unwelcome guest, or merely someone who was mistaken for someone else?
P: The Department’s original findings suggested that the poet arrived late, was mistaken for someone else and then turned up at the wrong address. This remains the generally accepted history of authorship. I’ve always been suspicious of the romantic conception of the poet as the originating source of language. Words arrive carrying accumulated histories, conventions, prejudices and bureaucratic systems of authority that the poet neither invented nor can entirely control. The poet becomes not so much a manufacturer but more a forensic investigator, the first witness to a linguistic incident whose consequences cannot be entirely predetermined. But there is a further difficulty. If the poet’s identity is partly constructed through the reception of the work, perhaps the poet does not arrive before the poem. Perhaps the poet arrives retrospectively. The Department is investigating whether this explains the persistent absence of the author from the scene of the work.
L: I understand from your recent research that meaning has entered its crystalline phase. Should we now regard interpretation as a method of examining its structure, or do we risk altering the evidence each time we remove it from the light?
P: Crystals possess structure while remaining dependant on the conditions under which they form. If we change those conditions, other configurations become possible. Consequently, we have encountered a difficulty with the crystalline phase. The specimens appear to alter their structure according to who is examining them. Initially, we suspected the specimens… and then the observers…and now we suspect the distinction. Interpretation doesn’t simply reveal meaning. It participates in its production.
Our Division of Semantic Meteorology has been investigating the possibility that interpretation itself possesses something resembling a climate. Meanings condense under particular cultural pressures. They become stable through repetition and acquire authority through institutions and occasionally fracture when exposed to unfamiliar circumstances. This is especially apparent in networked reception, where images and texts circulates through systems that continually detach them from their original contexts. A poem encountered in a book, an exhibition, spoken word platform or a social media feed may retain its linguistic identity yet produce quite different interpretive formations. The crystalline phase then, does not represent the final solidification of meaning. It represents a condition in which meaning has become sufficiently structured to be examined and sufficiently unstable to fracture under examination. As for removing the evidence from the light, the Department would advise against it. We have discovered that the shadows it casts are an intrinsic part of the specimen.
Find more of Paul Woodford’s work on his website.
Laura Kerr is an award-winning Canadian visual artist and poet. In 2012, she was honoured with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her contributions to the arts and her long-standing commitment to art education.
She recently sold her art school to devote herself fully to her writing and art practice. Laura currently serves as Vice-President on the executive board of Plug In ICA, a leading contemporary art centre located on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, Canada.
For over 30 years, she co-owned and taught at Paradise Art School, specializing in classical and contemporary art education. Throughout her career, she has explored the intersections of traditional mediums and digital technology, increasingly blending painting, drawing, and photography with generative processes.
Her current focus is visual poetry—experimental, image-based works that merge poetic ambiguity with technological play. By using digital tools in process-driven ways, she ensures the artist’s hand remains central—even in collaboration with machines.
She is also developing a body of experimental poetry criticism, written in collaboration with AI trained on her own work. These pieces challenge conventional interpretation and embrace uncertainty, forming a self-reflective loop between maker, machine, and meaning.
