This very slight piece of writing has proven significant in the development of my research. Creative, speculative writing and more specifically what might be described as a tentative practice of “site writing” had already begun to become a part of my practice by the time of its creation; not least with my presentation at the Bergen Natural History Museum, in February 2019, but the creation of this short piece represented a novel approach to my artistic writing, which had up to this point focused on a longer form and on a conventional, albeit playful narrative, which was nonetheless written to unfold a thesis, using a relatively unambiguous voice.
Although my writing has always been a tool for allowing me to think about my research, here, not only the form of the writing, but also its orientation to the research process has become qualitatively different.
I found myself writing not only in response to the process of making ‘It’s only when I rest, that I sense your presence’ (the ventilator installation, I created for HKS), but also in response to my own experience of the completed gallery installation; the words of my writing becoming a part of the process through which I learned about and from my experience of the installation.
Rather than try to use my writing forensically, to pin-down the precise nature of that experience, here, my approach became deliberately allusive and fragmentary; the voice adopting the position of an often imperative first person singular; an “I” whose position and identity (possibly human, possibly machine) is not clear.
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It’s only when I rest that I sense your presence
Bodies in space;
Bodies in space, breathing; My body in a space, breathing.
Pause!
Listen,
Count,
Breathe.
The body activates the space;
My body; This is not my body; What are these bodies to my body?
Hold your breath!
Listen,
Count,
Breathe.
Between speech, between breath, between the occupation of a space;
In the intervals, in the gaps, you and I are becoming.
Pause!
Listen.
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