INSTITUTE FOR DOCTORAL STUDIES
IN THE VISUAL ARTS
by Lucas Alan Dietsche, Cohort '23
Monte Testaccio, or the Hill of Pots, is an ancient garbage dump of broken pottery shards in Rome. During the Italian Residency, I was reminded of Rosalind Krauss’s theory on signifiers and indices, looking at the Monte Testaccio. Using Krauss and poetics, I regard Monte Testaccio as an amalgamation of ancient signifies(pots) creating an index-a human-made hill (collection of pots). This is a brief taphological and auto-ethnographical observation of Monte Tessaccio through the Kraussian signification and poetics. I use my poem “Stone(s)” to reconsider the role of value and legacy in a world increasingly defined by disposability. My poem “Stone(s)” dares to stretch the ontology of Roman sites like Monte Tessacio to connect with the Italian Renaissance as the index of time and the shards of signifiers of time reflection-variables:
i go through new colors only brought in synechia sleep
Imprisoned in a star
the dawn speaks
to Palatine Hill
A Tuscan outpost past cemetery gates
Always Caesar’s fingers entrenched
Upon the doors of Rome
This is where the home empire starts,
And it’s a million-year gaze,
Behind him the Monte Tessacio
Living amorpha, shards.
Between myself and I cobalt
Spake Aurelian Walls
an oval art
Displace glowing Tiber’s debris.
Operates time as bricks, lead to Spannocchian grounded tower rose,
And roads to be always under sandals
As Etruscan antiques
Marching legions rhizomes,
Their flutter mandolin simulacrum.
When i awake from art, its instant pain,
Amongst Dante’s umbra’s ankles
i art for gods in inherited pigments
Marbles hued skin
While wagon chariots crush dirempted walls without use of semaphore
That give me great polyphonic vibrations,
this timeline worth wearing now,
when corneas strung in chains,
What do we do when we are being in the index of time?
The lemon days are scared away,
Through signifies Somewhen it used to be
(Dietsche unpublished manuscript)
Through poetics, the shards of amphorae are artworks and not just static objects but dynamic entities that engage with their contexts, histories, and viewers the shards signify. The poem engages with its layers, such as the Monte Testaccio, using Kraussian terms like signifiers and index (995). Through the exploration of signifiers, there is an emphasis on the complex ways in which signification and meaning are constructed. This is evident in the disorientation of the poem's organization as it is a critique of linear time as an index. The pottery shards of Monte Testaccio serve as a metaphor for the city's history and personal identity, both beautiful and broken within and without time’s indices. Through poetics, this prompts reflection on the definition of signification as per pottery shards and the index as Monte Testaccio. This becomes a signifying endeavor, urging the contemplation of what humans leave behind and how those remnants shape our understanding of the liminal time-space.
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By spotlighting the taphological Kraussian signification of Monte Tessaccio as both landscape and Roman-made hill-scape, poetic documentation confronts cycles of creation and destruction (995). The pottery shards have given up their original vocation and thing-ness centuries ago as vessels for wine, oil, and fish sauce but are now the accumulation of a human-made hill.
Monte Tessaccio is an example signifier of pottery shards and a collection of pottery shards as an index. Poetry prompts reflection on the environmental-making collection of indices, in this case, a pottery grave site. The pottery shards are a living pottery grave that allows poetic language to stem from centuries past. This imagery of discarded amphorae symbolizes civilization as the inertness of a staple of trade, art, consumption, and nature. The amorpha conjures poeticalness of transport, community, and work, but with the site, brings up thoughts of death and uselessness.
Monte Testaccio stands as a profound symbol of human history, embodying the complexities of creation, destruction, and the cyclical nature of time. Through the lens of Krauss’s insights into signification and embracing the poetic and philosophical dimensions of Monte Testaccio, the appreciation of it poetically and not merely as a refuse site but as a rich tapestry of history and meaning. Through the use of the poem “Stone(s), a deeper contemplation of what it means to be both a product and a participant in history. By using these shards as a metaphor for both the impermanence of time and the enduring traces of human existence, "Stone(s)" reflect engagements with the past hood, how it shapes humans, and in turn, shapes the understanding of time-space as signifiers and indices.
Works Cited
Dietsche, Lucas Alan “Stone(s)”. 2024. Unpublished manuscript.
Krauss, Rosalind. Notes on the Index Part 1. Harrison, Charles, et al. Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas. Blackwell Publishers, Blackwell, Publishers, 2000.