ART BY TRANSLATION

The House of Dust by Alison Knowles
INHABITED BY BIRDS AND FISH

*A Constructed World, An Hysterical Documentation (paper room #5), 2017*

For the exhibition The House of Dust by Alison Knowles at the Fonderie Darling, A Constructed World present a paper construction that is a version of the following quatrain :

A HOUSE OF PAPER
IN A DESERTED FACTORY
USING ALL AVAILABLE LIGHTING
INHABITED BY BIRDS AND FISH

A testimony to the research made by A Constructed World over the past twelveyears, this “house of paper” floating over the space of the exhibition, also offers a place for the accumulation of material realized during the context of the exhibition. Over the opening weekend A Constructed World invite guests and the wider public to address an eel, a sculpture representing an animal, which, in the cosmogony of the Australian artists, is a messenger between species, human and non-human. If it is difficult to express one’s thought in everyday life, A Constructed World offers a space where the interlocutor, the eel, authorizes these expressions into performative dimensions: conversation, speech, song, music, dance, etcetera. The title of the project, An Hysterical Documentation, illustrates a principle in A Constructed World’s work and the way they have documented their project Explaining Contemporary Art to live Eels over the past twelve years, inviting art experts to explain their research to live eels, that are then released back into their natural environment. Aside from Explaining contemporary art to live eels, An Hysterical Documentation utilises another protocol. In this case people are invited to speak directly to a sculpture of an eel, an artwork, that like the live eel, is an unlikely object without gender and its life-cycle and nature remains unknown and shrouded in mystery. It is in the setting of this research and the voluntarily performance of invitees that the material speech of the eel and the artwork may reside.