“The longer you listen to a sound, the more abstract it becomes, and ironically the quieter, the more subtle and the more real” (adaptation from Lucian Freud).

How can you name the ineffable? As you enter the exhibition space and stand facing a violin that is not a violin you are faced with a negation, a negotiation, a neg-otium... Otium being a sort of nothing, an expansion of silence; this then may become desirable.

The proposal is to use the exhibition space at the Fine Arts Museum to present the present... Humanity merely walks in and is faced by what seems to be a very silent/still music accompanied by the solo voice of a publication. This might confront the average spectator with a spectre, the simulacrum of itself that stalls, halts being something in its tracks.

The proposal then is a design to help one stop and recover their otium, and possibly to re-dis-un-cover something-in-(them)selves.

Featuring the work of John Paul Azzopardi accompanied by a written analysis by Michael Zammit, the exhibition will be inaugurated on Monday and will feature an introduction by Dr Zammit and Caldon Mercieca.