The Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons (2016)
On Bertold Brecht's bedside table lay a pulp novel, whose covers suggest a crime story. I open the book and read between the lines: “In fact, in this paradise… on the smallest change in price of the most essential means of subsistence, a change in the number of deaths and crimes”. The cover drops and reveals Marx's Das Kapital. High-brow cloaked in cheap thrills.
In The Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons, two piles of books stand next to each other: a tower of sentimental literature and one of philosophy. Two performers stand side by side and read out loud from each book. The routes of romance and metaphysics mingle: the performance of thinking veils the performance of sentimentality, the performance of sentimentality obstructs the performance of thinking. Words cover each other, reasons lie over reasons. Philosophy is cloaked in tears, sighs overflow sense. Two new piles of books grow, compete, copy each other’s shape.
The Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons was presented in The House is Looking for an Admiral to Rent, curated by Marie Bechetoille, April 20th - October 9th 2016, National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest, Romania
