Cara Farnan
and you really move is a sculptural installation and private participatory performance which took place alongside the HKU MaFA graduation exhibition The Time That Keeps Growing Quietly in Our Absence, from June 27th - July 8th 2021 at the Academie Gallerie, Utrecht.
Each day following the close of the exhibition, one participant was invited to join in a shared reading of the printed text.
Written in the form of a mobius strip, this text is composed of a series of short phrases or sentnences with no begininng or end. As it was read aloud by the artist and the participant, the text circulated through the performance structure. Both voices spoke aloud reading the part of the text they were holding and as the pace of reading and pulling differed between participants, the order of the words was inconstant flux. In each individual performance, the words took on new meaning, and were reshaped by the interaction between the artist and participant.
By day, the text lies waiting. It is quiet and unmoving.
But by evening, the text is spoken and comes to life in the presence of the voices and hands that take it up and move it, beginning a process of circulation.
In conversation, we are always passing parts of ourselves back and forth. Where one of us ends and the other begins is blurry.
You and I read together, and as we do, we set words flowing.
Words are messy moving things, and the voice brings the body with it as it goes. Our languages contain a physicality that takes up space and crosses from body to body.
You and I address ourselves, we address each other, we address all that moves through the air between us.
You and I make meaning together by endlessly restating and reordering what passes through our hands.
You and I make meaning together by talking and sharing and transforming.
You and I make meaning together, slowly, over time.
Cara Farnan
