My Favourite Things (1993)

(installation with audio; texts on cards, photo panels are 48"x48")
Circling aroud the cube the viewer can pick up business cards on which are printed short texts. One relates the story of a wolf approaching and circling; another is the story of a child panic at being lost; another a questioning of the possibility of expression. Triggered by a motion detector, a recording of John Coltrane improvising on the melody if My Favorite Things can be heard very faintly for a few minutes.

 

You are walking alone across the valley. The land is flat, without trees. You see a wolf approaching. Close now, it circles you, close enough that a jump would bring you into contact, getting downwind and around again in a kind of sideways trot, nose, ears, eyes focused on you in acute curiosity. You are aware of an intelligence not akin to your own. You wonder what the wolf is thinking. You will remember this moment. The wolf, distracted, moves off, looking back once.

 

 

At the fair it's crowded. People's heads above you, moving in all directions. Pink nests of cotton candy. YouÕre with your mother and brother. Eddies of sound and smell slide between the bodies to surround you. Suddenly, you realize that you atre alone. YourÕre lost. Mom is gone. You panic. What are you going to do now?

 

 

You agonize over which voice to use. You try it several different ways. You must speak but you want an elusive distance. Irony perhaps. Camouflage. There are the cries of pain, after the operation, so unguarded you are lost for a moment. A part of time derails. And the sight of the wound. Who can play with a weight to balance that, you ask. What an idea! Playing out a vacuum the rest of us carry inside. Driving right through it.