Paris+English=Parish

Video
6min
2005

This is a monochrome video with no images. The central narrative is a letter written by a woman with found images and observations while wandering around a city. The letter is read by three male voices that overlap, interweave and disrupt each other so the text becomes incomprehensible, until the end when the “readings” become synchronized again.


Dear Friend,
Every boat returns.
I too have returned to the original peninsula where the
everyday is loaded with too much reality. What one has
left once is forever beyond grasp, but I am nervous and
hover between returning to ancestral landscapes and
knowing that such a return, unromanticized is impossible.
Although I’m here now, I’m everywhere all the time.
Just like you.

So I have yet to find a face. A face that’s not dead. It is
Now up to Mr. Painter of human faces to give me a face.
With that goal in mind, I guess it’s not necessary to rebuke
The painters in the academy for painting faces.
I shall speak to the painter about my search for a nationality,
Blood relation, race generation, house clan tribe and tribe
Stock. I shall speak about how I was taught by nuns to
Communicate in blues and blacks.
Perhaps this information can prevent a painting of another
Death mask like other painters have done so before.
I shall tell my painter that I wanted to be fluent in a language
Of friendship because I’m not a stranger to myself.
I mean, I am not a man.
With this information, maybe my eyes, nose and mouth can
Escape from looking like pits of death.
Sometimes they captured the upturned nostrils, containing
Empty screams and silent pits of immobility. And maybe
That was the problem.
There is a painter still, who can resist the death record of
Human faces and empty wastelands of the mind.
Insane enough to embark upon the mad and foolish journey –
Called painting a confession of the human face.

With much love,
I write to you from Parish


(excerpt from video Paris+English=Parish)