Pausa
Tania Candiani
Pause
A group of writers convened by Candiani tell stories directly into the ear of a scribe, who takes down each narrative by hand as a first draft, a translation process that culminates in a final typewritten version and in the artist’s own video record. This project combines Candiani’s fascination with oral history and cartographies of memory with her research, driven by her interest in obsolescence and technological reminiscence, into artifacts and machines.
Characteristically, many of these works involve sound materials. In fact, the artist had already documented the figure of the scribe for her action Otras narrativas [Other Narratives] (2009), in which she used a sewing machine to record the words whispered by spectators to their lovers during intercourse. In Pausa, the main sound emission comes from the scribe’s hands and the typewriter. The image shifts from an initial frontal shot of the two participants, where the writer is speaking, to other shots in which their bodies disappear and the written language is relegated to background: we can’t make out more than a scattering of words, and we have no access to the scribe’s final interpretation of the story. In any case, Candiani offers us the dance of the typewriter keys as a way to access sound, including the silences that allude to the act of thought.
TANIA CANDIANI (1974)
Pausa, 2012
Pause
Video installation. Single-channel video divided into 2 screens, stereophonic sound. 4:3 format, and 18 typed pages
Acquisition through the SHCP Pago en Especie program, 2018
