Crop

text - pattern - site

Date: 2010
First location: John Hansard Gallery

Date: 2010/2013/2018 | Location: John Hansard Gallery, Southampton/ Tate Modern, London, Khoj Art Centre New Delhi| Elements: trilingual audiowork, trilingual orange text vinyl, graphic pattern|  sound design: Adam Parkinson

Sign: /o/

Overview

The text, the missing letter, the graphic pattern.
Text in emergency orange installed with whited out letter /o/. Every /o/ removed is kept as trace and recreated into an open pattern.

2018
Southampton

Location: JHG, Southampton | Date: 8 Sept -3 Nov 2018 | Info: Large scale remake, facing civic square, emergency orange vinyl, pattern of gold /o/ on window, sound piece from Adam Parkinson: a drone of /o/…

Photos

Photos by kind permission John Hansard Gallery

Bergvall is an in-between: her work traffics on borders and barriers.

Vincent Broqua – Modernist Legacies

Background

“Crop”, written in an interwoven trilingual syntax takes the form of a pattern-led litany to express the frequently violent impact of border-crossings, language-crossings for minority or differential status of all kinds. And the way we are each inhabited by this.

In bookform, it is preceded by “Cropper”, a short poetic autobiographic account on discovering my sexuality as minoritarian, and the decision to adopt English as a personal base for my writing & living. Pleasure and trauma. Working a way through.

2010

John Hansard Gallery

Info: Original set-up, part of solo show Midling English | Elements: Two sided wall. Also a dedicated quadrophonic soundroom. With reflective grey vinyl quote by Edouard Glissant |

Photos by Steve Shrimpton

Excerpt

Some never had a body to call their  own before it was taken away
som aldri hadde en kropp de kunne kalle sin egen før den ble revet bort
ceux dont le corps d’emblée leur est arraché

note – “kropp” is pronounced “crop” = “body” in Norwegian.
noen” = “some” (Norw.);  close to French “nous” (“we“).
oss” = “us” (Norw.) = pronounced French “os” (“bone“).
In the installation format, the /o/ are all whited out.

2014
Tate Modern London
Khoj Centre
New Delhi

 Location: Tate Modern, London | Date: 12 July – 3 November 2013 | Group show Word Sound Power | Khoj Art Centre, New Delhi, India | Date: 10 January – 8 February 2014 | Elements: Installed audio and text “Crop”. Second pattern-led text piece, “Voice” | Link: Tate, Word Sound Power.

Sound
Christopher Nealon: Postures and Mantras: Responses to Caroline Bergvall: “Croup”  in English Language Notes 50.1 Spring / Summer 2012 / link to come

Nathalie Camerlynck: Cat in the Throat: C. Bergvall’s Plurilingual Bodies in Transnational Literature, 2015 – PDF –