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The way you talk

Installation
La Vitrine, galerie de l’ENSAPC, Paris, 2005

The intervention The way you talk is the result of a cartography of a 4 hour walk in the streets of Paris during which I continuously jotted down the words I overheard. My disinterest for everyday conversations in public space is at the origin of this intervention. The rhythm of the walk creates interruptions in the flow of words as one passes from one conversation to the next. The walk reconstructs a fragmented and multiple sentence without any specific subject. This passage from one to the other comes together as a plurality that constitutes a place. In this case: Paris on a sunny and chilly winter afternoon. This construction of a plurality resulting from interrupted spoken words reflects the multiple facets of reality in which the banal coexists with the historical, the weather, philosophical questions, geography, city directions. In the neutral space of he gallery, the sentences: It is cold – look the Eiffel tower – where are you going – there are a lot of Arabs there at the bottom of the Seine—invoke the outside from the inside. In weaving a multitude of relations to the city, the words relocate the visitor in a geographic and affective field which goes beyond the gallery space.