Clare Koury: If You Can Read This Thank The Phoenicians

“A word is simply a sequence of proper letters terminating with an improper letter called space.”
— Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1983)

The task of the translator is tricky and threefold: translation, interpretation and transmission. One must decipher meaning in context and through time, and minimize potentials for information loss in its delivery. At times legibility is at odds with fidelity, and conversion degrades resolution of meaning. There is no lossless transfer and every translation betrays the bias of interpretation.

X is a letter but also a question, an unknown variable that bears the treasure lost to time or deliberate obfuscation. The problem of perception is simple: the more certain you are of what’s in front of you, the harder it is to see anything else.

Put plainly, Seek and you shall find.
Ф㰐䒰ऐФ堰अ Ф䰐䒰ँ | B-q-š-w-t-p-q-d | [baˈqeʃ u tˈpaqad] | bah-KESH oo t-pah-KAHD

If You Can Read This Thank The Phoenicians is a solo exhibition by Clare Koury, presented as the culmination of her Windgate Fellowship and artist residency at Purchase College, SUNY.

The works on display are copper pipes from composite open-pit mines in the western hemisphere, quartz and meteoric iron rocks foraged from 12 American seismic and magnetic hotspots, and scrolls of EMF-harmonizing faraday fabric bearing time-series data from the Space Observation System at the Tomsk University of Science in
Siberia. The time-series data visualizes fluctuations within the Schumann resonance (the “heartbeat of the Earth”) and is presented here as a continuous record, beginning January 01 2025 and unfurling until it hits a wall and begins again.

Proto-Nostratic / Proto-Eurasiatic ḱom- / ḱum- “collective closeness” →
Proto-Indo-European root ḱom- / ḱóm meaning “with, together” → Sanskrit सम ्(sam) = with, together → Avestan
(Iranian) ham- = together → Hittite (Anatolian) kan- / kon- “with” → Tocharian B käṃ “with” → Old Irish (Celtic)
prefix comh- → Gothic (Germanic) prefix ga- → Old Church Slavonic съ- (sъ-) Latin prefix com- / con- = with →
Greek σύν (sún) “together”
+
Proto-Indo-European *gʰren- / ghrōno “time, season” → Sanskrit घृत (ghṛta, “lasting, long-lived”) → Old Irish
crith (“time, season”) → Lithuanian žarã s (“heat, season”) → Greek χρόνος (khrónos) “time”
+
Latin -itas “state, quality” → Old French -ité → Middle English -ite/-ity → English -ity
syn- + khronos + -ity → synchronicity
= “the state of being in time together”

Special thanks to Dan Short of IONX Textile Technologies; Chris Habib (@visitordesign) for sublimation expertise; Connor Tomaka for generous editorial support.