Sacha Archer's Stamp Pad Notes: Reading a poem with no beginning or end?

Primary Language. 2025

Sacha Archer's exploration of the materiality of language has pleasantly mystified and amused me for several years. His stamp pad works stage linguistic characters within an indeterminate visual field, where they exceed their semantic function and operate instead as shifting forms and surfaces. Reconfiguring text as a visual event, Archer foregrounds its potential to destabilize meaning while simultaneously inviting aesthetic play.

Like Steve McCaffery’s Carnival series, Archer’s work favours a serpentine composition. However, where McCaffery's pieces feature map-like structures and legible words, the characters in Archer's works stand alone, fluidly tracing paths that suggest an organic movement akin to biological drift in illusory space. His poems often employ a free-form jumble, in contrast to the a subtle rectilinear scaffolding of McCaffery’s typewritten works. Words tumble, and through repeated forms he weaves structural webs that might best be described as omni-directional poems. Within these, individual letter-forms exhibit a kind of kinesis—movement without fixed orientation but responsive to proximity—so that each form or element excites or informs the next, together generating a dynamic, emergent syntax.

Primary Language, 2025 presents a dynamic interplay of shapes, characters, and symbols suggesting movement and transformation. On the left, an elongated oval seems to observe the other characters, while a curved arc of asterisks leaps toward (or perhaps from) a cluster of overlapping letters on the right. This cluster—composed of thick, rounded forms and segmented elements—resembles a cell-like structure, at once organic and mechanical. The composition evokes a living system: the elements appear to interact and evolve in relation to one another, as if the poem itself were a miniature literary organism. Each mark functions like a cell or limb, imparting vitality and internal rhythm so that the poem can be read not only visually but as a self-contained, dynamic entity with its own logic.

Archer’s deft use of the stamp pad technique produces effects ranging from shifts in scale to textural and granular variations. This hands-on process embraces imperfections, imparting an earthy grain to each impression and to the poem as a whole. These stamped textures lend a sculptural sensibility to the characters, imbuing them with semantic weight  extending beyond literal meaning. The material itself—and how it is applied through marks, smudges, and graphic variations—becomes part of the poem’s voice, reflecting the physicality of labour. Stamps also enable repetition, recalling the mass production of consumer goods. Yet here, repetition functions instead as an exploration of the tension between uniformity and difference. This emphasis moves Primary Language away from linguistic content toward graphic and structural resonance.

Ultimately, Primary Language can be discussed in formal and theoretical terms: it demonstrates how a poem can exist without beginning, end, or words, operating instead as a literary organism. Its vitality lies not in linguistic content but in its physicality and composition. Its stamped impression embodies McLuhan’s idea that “the medium is the message,” with grain, smudges, and repetitions serving not as flaws but as the poem’s very voice. In breaking language down to its basic forms, Archer reminds us of its dual power as both graphic and literary—a sign-image. More simply, through play, experimentation, and boundary-pushing, Archer’s work reflects the innate curiosity of the human condition.

Lastly in parting I leave you with my humble animated reading of Sacha's Primary Alphabet, enjoy!