September 14 to September 2

Anne Dubos

La semaine dernière Manuela nous a invitées à écrire en Argentine, pour Biennal Sur.

Elle nous a dit qu’on pourrait envoyer une à plusieurs cartes postales chacune, qui seraient exposées sur un grand panneau horizontal transparent de manière à les voir de chaque côté et pour faire face à la verticalité de l’édition des lettres numériques qui seraient imprimées sur de grands rouleaux de papier peint.

J’ai préparé 10 enveloppes roses, 10 cartes blanches — Les mêmes cartes blanches qu’on avait utilisées avec Natacha pour le film sur la vie de Warburg —  et 10 photographies ; des surimpressions que je collectionne depuis longtemps. Puis 10 timbres, que j’ai trouvés dans le bureau de ma grand-mère. 

Je ne sais pas encore ce que j’écrirai. Mais chaque dimanche, avant d’envoyer un image en ligne, je tracerai des lettres sur une carte blanche, que j’accompagnerai d’une photographie. J’aime l’idée qu’a chaque envoi se fixe une nouvelle idée, un message d’amour pour mes Crown Sisters.

Emma Woffenden

Liza Dimbleby

Letter from Glasgow: Looking Out, Looking In

People have started to visit the house. I have watched them, in my rooms, in my chairs, precisely lit by familiar angles of light and shadow specific to these interiors at certain times of day, the faces I had seen only on the street, blurred and over exposed for most of the past two years. Inside, we reclaim the space and shifting light of intimacy.  more

Dettie Flynn

Manuela Morgaine

The snail moves, only forwards, thanks to its foot, which is a gigantic muscle which contracts and lengthens alternately: this is the phenomenon of crawling. The average speed of a snail is one millimeter per second, or six centimeters per minute. The glands of snails also secrete different types of mucus containing many compounds that both allow it to move more easily by sliding over obstacles and even attach itself vertically to certain walls. Mucus is also part of the composition of the shell. Thick, it hardens and dries on contact with air, leaving a brilliant trail in the light. The songs and noises of the snails all seem to be reduced, with variations, to a single physical phenomenon: under the effect of a sudden and rapid retraction of the animal, withdrawn from its element and excited, a mass of gas, like air bubbles, trapped in a cavity is violently expelled and passes through a narrow orifice, encumbered with more or less viscous liquid, and it bubbles: the noise produced thus may go from a simple twitter to an almost musical sound close to kissing. Likewise, the contact between the snail’s shell and a glass pane emits, during the movement of the animal, a noise similar to that of a wet finger on a glass; the shell playing, opposite the glass, the role of a bow on a stringed instrument. Some snails produce plaintive calls when caught. In captivity, Planorbis corneus emit a high note, similar to the sound produced by a flute, with each daily feeding. Helix aspersa, utter cries of agony when cooked alive. These noises were at the origin of European beliefs, attributing to the “song” of snails a premonitory value.

Aurelia Mihai

Maricarmen Marino

Ruth Maclennan