The True Meaning of Things Lies in their Use

2006
Series of Photographs
Collaboration with Hugo Glendinning


Images: © Tim Etchells and Hugo Glendinning

As a starting point for their contribution to Echo Cities, Etchells and Glendinning ‘wrote’ a phrase/manifesto – THE TRUE MEANING OF THINGS LIES IN THEIR USE – onto the map of Sheffield, by tracing the lines of the streets to shape the letters on the map.

Subsequently, the artists walked the route they had written onto the map, treading the letters into the city, making a journey that spelt out the title phrase using, as writing tools, the movement of their bodies up and down the streets. The long walk provided the occasion for both documentation of the city and its inhabitants in photographs and text-fragments.

For Echo Cities: British Pavillion at the Venice Bienale of Architecture.

Conceived and developed by Jeremy Till with Ian Anderson, Ruth Ben-Tovim, Tim Etchells, Hugo Glendinning, Jim Prevett, Trish O’Shea, Martyn Ware & Sarah Wigglesworth.

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