Jennie Guy
Reading Ensemble
On Saturday, 31st July 2010, I performed a piece called Reading Ensemble at the Livestock Summer Party located in the Market Studios, Dublin.
In the corner of a room I built a sculpture out of books from my personal library. The books were placed face down and the book spines turned away from the viewer so that the audience could not see what the books were, only that certain pages had been book-marked on specific passages within each book.
When the performance commenced I approached each audience member individually, handing them a book from the stack and dictating the instructions: “Read aloud from the marker until I take this book away from you”.
The effect was a slow crescendo of voices reading different books simultaneously. After the entire audience had been reading for a few minutes, I began taking back the books and recreating the tall pile of books in the corner of the gallery space one book at a time. The sound in the room slowly faded to silence. This denoted the end of the performance.
This work is the first iteration of this performance in an ongoing series.
Installation view
Reading Ensemble – Texts
The following texts were arbitrarily chosen from my reading collection for the first performance of Reading Ensemble at Live Stock. Future iterations of the project will use different texts.
The Story of Art
Power and Glory
E. H. Gombrich
Page 342
The Poetics of Space
Corners
Gason Bachelard
Page 136
On Photography
The Heroism of Vision
Susan Sontag
Page 100
Joyce, Race and Empire
White Horse, Dark Horse: Joyce’s Allhorse of Another Colour
Vincent J. Cheng
Page 253
The Royal Society: 350 Years of Science
Heroes and Villians
NA
Page 40
Hospitality
Charmed Stranger
Victor Mazin (ed Michael Corris, Jasper Joseph-Lester, Sharon Kivland)
Page 150
Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology
Perverse Media: Staging a Surplus of Enjoyment
Andre Musselder
Page 128
Autofiction
18th Summer
Hitomi Kanehara
Page 120
Guys and Dolls and Other Stories
Social Error
Damon Runyon
Page 207
Franny and Zooey
Zooey
J. D. Sallinger
Page 172
A William Burroughs Reader
The Wild Boys
William Burroughs
Page 224
Wetlands
NA
Charlotte Rush
Page 12
Mr. Tayto: The Man Inside the Jacket
Factory Years
Mr. Tayto
Page 39
Burried Child
Act 1
Sam Shepard
Page 63
The Housekeeper and the Professor
Chapter 2
Yoko Ogawa
Page 20
No one belongs here more than you
The Swim Team
Miranda July
Page 13
How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
Books You Have Heard Of
Pierre Bayard
Page 32
Acting: The First Six Lessons
Concentration
Richard Boleslavski
Page 3
Power, Politics, and Culture
Europe and Its Others: An Arab Perspective
Edward W. Said
Page 385
Guide to Conversation in French, English, and Chinese
Common Phrases
F. S. Couvreur
Page 170
Artwork: Everything You Need To Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career
Rejection: Its Not You, Its Them
Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber
Page 161
Warped Space: Art Architecture and Anxiety in Modern Culture
Terminal Transfer
Anthony Vidler
Page 173
Talking Art: Interviews With Artists Since 1976
Lucy Lippard Interviewed by David Coxhead
Patricia Bickers and Andrew Wilson
Page 134
From Surface to Origin: Journeys Through Recent Art From India and Thailand
Jennie Guy on Mit Jaiin
Brian Curtin
Page 17
The How Not-To Cookbook: Lessons Learned the Hard Way
Hosting
Aleksandra Mir
Page 124
Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Century
The World As a Shoping Basket
Silvie Fleury
Page 82
How to Do Just About Everything
Food Basics
Courtney Rosen and The eHow Editors
Page 362
Human Body
Cardiovascular Disorders
Ed. Anne Baggaley
Page 345
The Magic of The State
A Note on Names and Naming
Michael Taussig
Page NA
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept
Part 1
Elizabeth Smart
Page 20
Fiction and the Reading Public
Reading Capacity
Q. D. Leavis
Page 215
Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader
The Re-Masculinization of America
Susan Jeffords (Ed. John Storey)
Page 311
Hedda Gabler
Act 2
Henrik Ibsen
Page 296
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
Poem for Personal Managers
Charles Bukowski
Page 25
Snakes and Earrings
NA
Hitomi Kanehara
Page 67
Malone Dies
NA
Samuel Beckett
Page 184
The Social Contract
Whether the Genral Will Can Err
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Page 30
The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms
NA
J. P. Donleavy
Page 1
Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers
Mind and Matter: According to the Medieval Christian Thinkers
S. E. Frost Jr.
Page 234
100 Selected Poems
Poem 55
E. E. Cummings
Page 67
Is There a Nutmeg in the House
Untraditional Christmas Food
Elizabeth David
Page 171
The Wine Buyers Guide
Introduction: Collectors Vs. Consumers
Robert Parker
Page 31
What Makes A Great Exhibition?
The Unstable Institution
Carlos Basualdo (Ed. Paula Marin-Cola)
Page 52
In Praise of Slow: How A Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed
Slow Is Beautiful
Carl Honore
Page 37