“Soliloquy” is a clever kind of provocation, as it is a web version-of a book edition-of a gallery installation. It is a week’s worth of the artist’s spoken language captured in a veiled database. Kenneth Goldsmith's "Soliliquy" is a glimpse of the way that words shape our sense of selves and our place in the world. Goldsmith is reflective of his “bound” subjectivity through expendable words. He provokes us to consider the self consumed and disposal aspects of the words we use. In exploring this idea, he documents of every word he utters during the week of April 15-21, 1996, from the moment he woke up that Monday morning to the moment he went to sleep on Sunday night. The reader opens the text by clicking on the prologue quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Don’t, for heaven’s sake be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.” By clicking on the quote you gain access to his web catalogue of a week’s worth of spoken words, all in chronological order, but what is striking upon entering the text is the encounter of the blank screen of white. In order to reveal his lost words, you must mouse over the screen and a sentence of the carefully transcribed lexia appears (and disappears) as soon as the mouse moves on. The provocation is in the transient disposal of our words, as well as the utter banality of so much of what we say. Words are lost to the world as quickly as they are uttered, and what is left is like an empty canvas with a haunting afterlife. Words are rendered in “Soliloquy” like fleeting ghosts or traces that can be glimpsed but not captured. The title of the piece lends further comment, with it’s dramatic allusion to the inner life as a kind of performance. Ultimately, this piece elicits a deeper reflection about the dynamic world of our fleeting words as they shape our human subjectivity.