and if but by is a sound installation and language-based sound score mined from the text “A Theory of the Dérive” by Guy Debord, one of the main practitioners of the Situationist movement, selected from the archive collection at Bard CCS. a dérive translates to drift, how one moves through a city and navigates an awareness that forms between the terrain of site and self.
in the notational score, all words were removed from the text with the exception of prepositions and conjunctions, the language that locates and connects. the words were read and recorded, vocalized spatially through the speakers in a layered chorus where one is invited adrift, perpetually in motion.
Not Quite Verbatim
CCS Bard Hessel Museum
curated by Max Fields
featuring Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, D’Ette Nogle, Amie Siegel, Audra Wolowiec
April - May 2018
Not Quite Verbatim brings together artists who use interviews and related forms of recorded conversation as a medium, motif, site, and apparatus to examine the slippery relationships between utterance, context and subjective interpretation. Through reflection on varied forms of recorded conversation, these artists expose the embedded tropes and conventions that reinforce underlying conditions of performance, socio-historical omission, and authorial limitation.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, designed by Houston-based designer Amanda Thomas, featuring texts by the curator and commissioned and reproduced texts by participating artists.