The List & The Square
Video, 22', 2011
With: Sarah Arnolds, Carina Erdmann, Dorel Gillerman, Julia Herskovits, Lennard Houkes,
Annika Kappner, Lena Karssenberg, Sabine Kongsted, Cholena de Koningh, Caro Luttringer,
Tim Maarse, Layla van der Oord, Carla Peer, Lidewij Sloot, Emma Westenberg, Lukas Wolzak
This ongoing project involves a group of people engaging in a series of language exercises.
In these exercises, individual statements are bent and transformed through repetition, subjected to direct physical response of the group and influenced by change of the location where they are performed. The meaning incorporated in the individual statements is constantly being ‘shaken off’ in this process and replaced with the performative qualities of language and its properties of bare signifier. The title of the work refers to ‘the list’ or the catalogue of possible statements that are shared in public and to ‘the square’ as the public realm where those statements are accepted or broken down to fit the demand of collective usage.
These exercises are to be continued in different settings and with different starting points. The aim is to find the point in which language looses its premeditated meaning and becomes a physical and vocal manifestation of collective consensus or dissensus.

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