Brother and Sister

Performance, Rock Me Baby group show (cur. Sébastien Mettraux), Centre d’Art Contemporain, Yverdon-les-Bains, CH, 2020

Brother and Sister, 30′, performance, typewriter on raw canvas roll, text, sound, 2020 ©Claude Cortinovis/Bradford Spencer

When I opened it in the web browser, the file included around ten pages consisting of more than six international languages, although only three were translatable to French : The flyleaf, with a beautiful representation of the machine in three-quarter-face, the complete model name, the summary of the manual on the second page and the explanation of how to turn it on, on the third one, which explained that for doing it, the button had to be moved from the position “on” to “off”. Once again, I was no further ahead than one hour ago. From the fourth page, the file was blank, leaving me with the only pagination from 1 to 60, frustrated and looking a bit dumb.

At the bottom of the email included the option of “paying 120 euro to receive the full instruction manual in French”, knowing that I absolutely did not have this amount of money, followed by “you are receiving this email because you subscribed yourself to our website as well as our mailing list” knowing once again that I did not have the intention of doing that at first. I did think about the price of knowledge, which we always monetise always to a higher price depending how old and accessible. Asking myself why I not had a library card any more as when I was a child and why could I not find any specific store for my machine, even though I was living in a city with more than half a million citizens.

(script excerpt)