The Release of the Alphabet into the Wild

Sarah Sanders in Performance, Bury Art Gallery, Bury, England (30 April 2011)
(photo by NF Huth)
The simplest things can be the best.

During the opening of the Text Festival and its myriad art exhibitions in and near the Bury Art Gallery, in Bury, England, Sarah Sanders performed the simplest of acts at the oculus on the second floor of the building, and it was a performance that carried down onto the first floor.

She came to the railing around the oculus, where a number of people had gathered to watch her, and she held her two hands cupped together but open, and she gently blew the two handsful of paper letters out of her hands, slowly, so that they drifted onto the floor. Afterwards, she stood and smiled, and we clapped.

Hers was a beautiful release of the pieces of language into the world, to deal with the unavoidable aspects of the world: gravity, for instance. Her many was graceful and quiet. She arrived, she blew, she was done, but that was quite enough.

I caught this performance, though only clumsily, on video, but Nancy took a number of photographs that captured the real beauty of this act.


Sarah Sanders in Performance, Bury Art Gallery, Bury, England (30 April 2011)

ecr. l'inf.