Some Imperatives

2014
Performative Installation


Images: © Tim Etchells

Some Imperatives is a durational performance, comprising a sequence of short texts painted by a lone performer on a particular wall or walls.

Presented both in gallery spaces, and in outdoor locations in urban spaces, the text of the piece comprises a set of different slogans, demands for change, action or protest, philosophical reflection and political re-thinking.  As the individual texts shift register – poetic, absurd and pragmatic – the process of the performance – painting text, erasing and then repainting repeatedly in the same location over a period of time – foregrounds the  writing itself as a process of erratic argument and contradiction. As the walls used to paint the work on are repeatedly marked by the piece, the iterations of the text build up, partially showing through layers of paint to create a disordered residue of the ongoing action.

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