The following is a transcript of a lecture delivered by the Director-General to a fully empty room, recorded for posterity by the Director-General.
Thank you. Please, hold your applause; there is no one here to give it.
Tonight I wish to propose a theory I have been developing for nearly a week. I call it the Unremarkable Sublime.
The Premise
For centuries, we believed the sublime resided in the vast: the mountain, the storm, the cathedral. I say the sublime has been hiding, all this time, in the unremarkable: the kebab, the wall stain, the blurry dog, the photograph you almost deleted.
The mountain announces its grandeur. How vulgar. The wall stain says nothing, and in that silence (there) is the sublime. The wall stain does not perform. It simply leaks, and waits, and means.
The Three Pillars
My theory rests on three pillars, which I invented in the bath:
- The Worse the Source, the Richer the Wall Label. Significance is not found; it is applied, generously, by someone with a scarf.
- Context is a Choice. To withhold the origin is to create mystery. To reveal it, via a QR code, is to create comedy. Both are art. I take credit for both.
- Confidence is the Medium. The image is merely paint. The true material is the unshakeable belief that it matters.
In Conclusion
The Unremarkable Sublime will, I am confident, be taught in institutions for generations. It is already taught in this one, by me, to no one, repeatedly.
I thank the empty chairs for their attention. They have been, as ever, the perfect audience: silent, still, and incapable of disagreement.
Nigel Ponceby-Smythe, theorist of the overlooked