Nye Ffarrabas | Language Box

Nye Ffarrabas

Language Box

New York City, USA: Black Thumb Press, 1966

333 pp., 10.8 × 8.9 × 3.8 cm., boxed cards

Edition of 10

Nye Ffarrabas is an artist and poet known for her early contributions to Fluxus. She participated in exhibitions at the Judson Memorial Church Gallery (1966, 1968) and performed at Charlotte Moorman's 5th Annual Avant Garde Festival, in 1967.

Ffarrabas describes the above work as akin to a game without rules, invoking the “serious play” of children, who need no instructions to use a sandbox. The piece consists of a white box which houses an accordion-fold introductory booklet, 329 printed cards and 4 blank cards. The reader/player defines the parameters of the game, choosing to arrange or ignore the words printed on the cards. 

"Language Box is an invitation to the reader to involve themselves in this process of creative synthesis. It is an attempt to break out of, not to break down, traditional habits and inhibitors in order to arrive at a richer, fresher sense of language and the world," Ffarrabas writes in her introduction. 

The work is dedicated to Geoffrey Hendricks, then her husband and partner in the Black Thumb Press. The couple were married for ten years and had two children, but divorced in 1971, both identifying as queer. Their divorce was commemorated with a Flux Divorce performance in which all of their belongings were cut in half and divided. See earlier post for details, here. 

Then named Bici Hendricks, the artist reverted to Bici Forbes (she was born Beatrice Forbes) and more recently changed her name to Nye Ffarrabas.

Language Box work is available for $1,100 US, here, or £800, here. 

See also: Punctuation Poems and 5 Seed Poem. 

"Playing around is the most important goal of the arts today. For no reason. For non sense, Bici Hendricks gives you a neat, cheap little word game, Language Box." 

- Allan Kaprow, 1966