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disABILITY - John Ziddovici
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While the Braille is in fact roughly at the height normally required for public spaces, both its exaggerated scale and three-dimensional articulation make it difficult to decipher. It is further obstructed by benches and tables, and should someone able to read Braille be led to it by a good Samaritan, the text's first line, DON'T/TOUCH WHAT YOU ARE_ AFTER IS NO LONGER THERE, is not very encouraging. Clearly this text is not there to be 'read' by feel, though the 'Lite-Brite' pegs do beg to be touched. Nevertheless, those who persist will be rewarded by a tactile reading of the architectural insert, and of the fish world they cannot see through the directives cut up from William S. Burroughs' novels, inter cut with slices of Beaudelaire's poems, urging them to SWALLOW UP THE DEAD LANGUAGES OF FISH AND ALL MUTE THINGS.

For the vast majority of the Caf�'s clientele, happy to just sit, eat and DRINK UP THE ALERTNESS IN EYES GLINTING WITH SLOW FISH LUST of somebody else's lunch companion, the mysterious Braille text is likely to just frustrate their ability to read, and their expectations for 'Brite-Lite's picture making capabilities. The points of light transmitted by the little plastic 'Brite-Lite' pegs at first appear like remnants of a malfunctioning LED running text, which can no longer keep running to you. But the pattern of the dots is clearly recognizable, the stillness permanent, and active participation is required to decipher this panoramic spectacle. Some have recorded the text and gone to on-line Braille sites for translations, while others have gone as far as inviting blind friends to lunch, with the hidden agenda of asking them to do the hard work.

The frieze of abstract text allows reading to be 'seen' as the spatial activity it had been until the advent of the book, and through its abstract properties, as an integral part of architecture. (Text, in/an architecture, has been generally rare since modern architecture used 'white-out' on decoration. Its occasional reappearance has further been discredited through association with failed regimes like Fascism and Post-Modernism.) The bright strip of Braille dots, here used to transmit light, (the negative of the black spots created while recording the text through rubbings) is a concrete reminder of the allusive beauty of inaccessible languages and alphabets. The juxtaposition of the Braille text as subtitles to the silent, horizontal 'tableau vivant' of fish life, can only be reconciled by following the text's urging to COMMUNICATE IN THE SILENT MEDIUM OF TWISTING FISH SPASMS.

DREAM EXTASY_BLIND WORDS FALLING IN FISH COLORED FLASHES is the self-explanatory last segment of this text-line.

John Zissovici is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Cornell University, and practices architecture and related matters.