/_
CIRCA, Montréal, 2013.

Moving from . I decide to walk backwards from one corner of a large open space to another. I have passed by the space before, never bothering to spend much time there because I haven't had reason too. It has a number of things in it. I am aware that it is not a perfect rectangle and some of the space veers off in a few different directions. A space with places to go.

Walking backwards is a daft and familiar pursuit (a lot of very real and physical unknowns are pretty scary when you take it seriously). Taking steps backwards, I become attentive to my foot rustle along the carpet. In my head I am chewing through my memories to imagine what I thought I had seen before. I think to myself: a small 30 cm 'thing' can't be too far away. But it doesn’t seem to reveal its way to me and I continue steps back, finding myself nearly (or what I think to be) a quarter of the way to my destination.

Something lumpy about knee height presses its uneven surface, soft and firm, into my left leg. I have an image in my head. First a leather couch to catch my tumble backwards. Or better, a sack of sand collared in by some kind of net. No couch at that height makes much sense! With the sack of sand, the statement and image fade into something other. 'The sand' refuses to deliver in permeable communication and I slither along its edge like a graphical wave. I take a few steps to the left. This soft bulk navigates the space. I feel connected again with my human body. This time I'm learning to write not just through using the hand. I am taking risks and shifting in and out of comprehensions.

This lumpy thing becomes a measure and I am making images privately for myself. So, that if the measure were seen, its visibility would be distanced by its solitude. And in its distance the measure becomes more public, its distance the measure of its image. No longer am I moving in this space as a private act, but I am left out in the world*. To here -

*When writing this I try to save writing with the title / and at the / the computer automatically understands it as a shortcut and tries to save it into my folders. Hide it away, make it belong somewhere. With _ I can save it within reach, to my desktop.

With thanks and acknowledgement to Charles Bernstein's Content's Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1986).

text by Sarah Rose

*** Leatherette piece made with Perrine Lotiron.
photo credit: Guy L'Heureux