Investigation

Paris, may 2013.

What is it about? The full restoration of a store and its main window, facing the sidewalk. What the paper is meant to do? Clearly, it’s about “paint”. But we can’t see it. The whole window is covered with a brown paper. Where is actually the paint? Inside the store or outside: above our heads or under our shoes? The white sheet of paper reading “paint” has been put up before the brown paper. The inscription might have been forgotten during the restoration work. Is it now obsolete? And what are we suppose to think about the small piece of orange scotch tape? Why is it placed on the window outside the store? Perhaps the brown paper was already in place inside. But, how to understand the fact that the scotch tape goes over only the second line, still displaying paint as a single word? Is it a mistake, through negligence, or to announce the next products being sold in this store from now on? And why does it come in orange? Is it to attract one’s attention, to prevent a danger, or simply because it was the unique at one’s disposal? Was it put up on purpose by a worker to confirm the inscription is no more relevant? Or was it added by a passerby to make a joke? Or starting a quizz about the paint: its color inside the future brand new store, white, bleu, green, orange, yellow, gray, purple…; its status, wet, damp or dry; its potential effects in the eyes of the beholder, aesthetic, emotional, enchanting, magic? Who knows! All these questions remain unanswered today. Of course, we would get more information by entering the shop and directly ask workers. But this weird inscription is the perfect situation to endorse a scriptopolian posture: don’t go too fast in interpreting a sign, be careful of the materials and not only the text, take into account the singularities of the site, imagine as much scenario as possible.