Rogue Words

By: David Mann

Rogue Words is a growing collection of fragmented phrases and aphorisms generated through a process of free-writing. Early iterations of these texts are hand-stencilled on selected pages of found books as well as in collage format. Rogue Words is the first in a series of public, experimental poster and publication projects exploring the nature of seemingly disparate or haphazard texts, and how words shift our ways of navigating the world as well as our places in it. The work draws on artists such as William Kentridge and Jenny Holzer who employ affectual and instructional language to brilliant ends, using words to guide, hold, provoke, and challenge their audiences. Rogue Words has similar purpose, albeit in a more localised and hyper contemporary manner – a collection of texts responding to, and making sense of, lives lived and lost during the pandemic.