Medium: Polished Wood (Meranti), hollow stainless steel balls, razorblades, text
Sizes: 1100 x 250 x 85mm
Edition: 1 Off
(Private collection of the artist)

In June 2009 the artist and his life partner each wrote a list of 50 words detailing how they felt about separation from one another, in daily life and in terms of their larger mortal journey together. These words were then engraved onto ordinary stainless steel razorblades and, after being read aloud during a private performance on the morning of Monday 29 June 2009, placed inside two stainless steel orbs. These orbs were immediately welded shut, sealing them in perpetuity but also erasing the sense of individual ownership that accompany the authoring of the lists: though each orb contains 50 words it is no longer possible to determine what, or whose, words are contained in each vessel. As with Schrödinger’s paradoxical cat sealed inside a box, it is possible that the words now oscillate between both orbs, existing as it were in a state of indeterminacy – collapsing the individual words and thoughts into a state of  ‘entangled’ co-existence. Paradoxically this state is simultaneously ethereal and concrete, static and in flux.

The work is perfectly balanced and, if touched, each stainless orb moves freely atop the ‘tracks’ created by the two wooden side sections, with the entire vessel rocking gently from side to side. The words contained within the stainless orbs also make a soft noise, ’speaking’ or ‘whispering’ (in an entirely different audiological / linguistic form) or ringing / ’shouting ‘when the orbs crash into one another as they become periodically separated and meet again.

The work pays homage to ‘Untitled (Perfect Lovers)’ (1991)‘ by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and ‘Gold Field’ (1992)  by Roni Horn.