Imminence 1993

18 Aug 1993 : The Performance Space, Cleveland Street, Sydney

The work was titled : Imminence, Installed light in three parts … lingering presence.
It was also subtitled (ANYHOW SONE) in reference to the dialogue with Yuji Sone about the formatting of the event. It was listed as a work by Gravity Feed but was also credited as my own work. It was part of the evening of works EventSpace in the Performance Space Gallery.

The notion of body-as-set in a necessary present (ie. the performed work), has ‘now’ fallen away. However, this space will exist as a set. Bodies will be present. Similarly, the theme of a sustained presence, repetition of the same, has always been put under erasure. Its significance has always been lost. In an evening like this evening, of easy exits and awaited arrivals, presence has always already departed and exited.
The work sustains, instead (and sustaining is its work), only the impossible presence of a myriad of absences - of which the viewer is assured at least a glimpse. The performative role, free of any obligation to make present anything which is foreign to the event, may linger on, veiled and mutable. Here the concept of embodiment fluctuates in an indeterminate suspension between space and event. The performance consists in the discovery and the unveiling, and nothing else.

• Anyhow, that linguistic bridge in the Australian vernacular addresses Yuji Sone’s Dada referent Nonetheless series.

Materials : candles, hurricane lanterns, methylated spirits, concrete pedestal, plastic tubing and nozzles, water, mushroom compost mix, salt, incidental bodies.