"A word is dead/ When it is said,/ Some say./ I say it just/ Begins to live/ That day".
Emily Dickinson's poem "A word" stands as a source of inspiration for the research
questions of this paper. Its focus lies on the possibilities inherent in the relationship
between art and language and the ways that language is being physicalised,
transcribed or used as medium, narrative and a central communication vehicle in the
artistic expression; mainly the polysemy of language, its potential and dynamic, as
well as its performativity. Taking J.L. Austin’s seminal book How to Do Things With
Words (1962) and Dorothea Von Hantelmann's study, How to Do Things With Art—
The Meaning of art's performativity (2010) as a point of departure, I tackle the question
of "How to do things with art and words". Yoko Ono's Grapefruit (1964) constitutes the
core case study of this research, and it is examined through the theoretical lens of two
key structuralist texts by Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes, which concern the new
role of the viewer in relation to modern art, music, and literature, aiming to query the
relationship between writing and performance, script/score and enactment, as well as
their blurring boundaries.
