Let us consider the word REPAIR

 

to mend, to fix, to set right, to make as good as new, to patch up, to stitch up,

to put back together, to overhaul, to service, to restore, renovate, recondition, rehabilitate, rebuild, reconstruct, refit, readjust, regulate and to fettle.

 

It’s Latin root reparare means ‘back’ (re-) and ‘make ready’ (parare).

Therefore, something in disrepair is in a state of ‘unreadiness’, conspicuous in its inaction.

 

As a word, it is charged with historical hangovers, connotations and memory.

It is laden with semantic traps that become entangled as we try to search for definition.

 

As an action, it can be a record of damage and resolution.

Repair is action and consequence, movement and stoppage, shifting and static.

 

Breakage is a synaptic separation, a charged gap within the material object.

It is a liminal, void, space within which memory and narrative become entrapped.

 

Repair can alter the meaning of an object, artefact, artwork or indeed, illustration.

Through evaluating fragments we we gain understanding of breakage, from there we

(as repairers) take the original into new, unplanned directions.

 

Repair is authorial, it is a bridge which holds stories over physical breakage.