The Hermit and The Crowd (2019) Audio for one person at a time in a dark room (duration: 28 minutes).

Text: Kate Pickering

Vocals: Reece Miller, Murat Adash, Barbara Pitzianti, Kate Pickering

An excerpt:

You sit alone in this room, cocooned in darkness. The door is shut, blinds are drawn over the Georgian sashes, the lights are out. Old air hangs, speckled with dust motes. It circulates a little with each intake and outtake of your breath, which spirals into the ambient atmosphere.

You are alone (I)

You (We)

You (Them)

You (He)

You (Her)

Here

Here you are

Hermit (airtight; impervious to external influence; recluse)

Hermit (relating to or characterized by subjects that are mysterious or abstruse)

Imagine looking down from above onto the top of your head. Picture your body here, seated alone in this room. Now you see that you are not alone, instead, a small crowd of other bodies is gathering around you. These bodies are different to your body, an array of sizes, ages and shades. The bodies are multiplying. The walls begin to recede. Now there aren’t just tens of bodies, but hundreds. They continue to assemble, now the crowd is in its thousands, now tens of thousands. Now, look up from the centre of this immense crowd. You can see your tiny face peering down on yourself from somewhere high up above. Now you look down upon yourself in the centre of a mottled pattern of many bodies, your face a small dot looking up. Now you look up, now you look down.

Installation images: Courtesy Manuela Barczewski