The Tyranny of Distance
Mieko Shiomi, Spatial Poem No. 9, 1975-2018
Wall drawing, performance in Angers and in Los Angeles
"Anna: So maybe we could talk now about the work of Mieko Shiomi, which is also connected through this theme of disappearance that we saw in Lila’s work. We have here one of her Spatial Poems, which are part of her practice that she has been doing since the 1970s as a member of Fluxus. She would send out requests to people to all enact a specific instruction or event score at the same time dispersed across different parts of the world.
Maud: So in each of her scores Mieko Shiomi publishes an instruction and also gives a precise time for the performance. And then the idea is that the piece would be taking place all at once in different locations separated by distance.
Sébastien: In this work we have a score that invites people to think about something that is disappearing, and to write it down and send it to us, along with peoples’ responses, the location of the respondents will be visualized in the exhibition space, so we will have a sense of the different places where this very private and internal process of reflection is going on. In fact through this work we get a sense of collectivity separated by distance.
Maud: So even though we have a rather sombre proposal of thinking about disappearance, we also have this more hopeful proposition to be assembled as a collective entity across this obstacle of distance."
This text is an excerpt from the performance The Infiltration by Joshua Schwebel whose project was to infiltrate the curators’ position in the exhibition. Read more