The Order Of Things: Where Are You?
authors: esther jones and marie-josiane agossou
video, colour, sound, 8”20″
Three faceless women try to juggle the care of an-Other with the tasks-at-hand, both essential in their roles. They are finding it difficult.
The Order of Things: Where Are You? looks at themes of identity, time and thought and the way it shifts in relation to the person-cared-for and the paraphernalia associated with that care. All three women are taken up with doing-for and being-for. Around them the environment hurries them on, they find themselves focused on the tasks. In contrast the toddler, the old man, the baby is urging them to slow down, to take notice. Time slows almost to a standstill at the point of connection, when they find themselves being-with their charges. The clarity of the task, to which they wish to retreat for all its defensive virtues, its neat categories, the semblance of order – cook the pasta, wash the dishes, sterilise the bottles – gives way to something powerful, something that stirs them up. But where should we find these women: in the tasks-at-hand or in the being-with, or somewhere in between? In between the push and pull: the concern, the anxiety, the anger, the adaptability, the softness, the ambivalence, the one-handedness, the memory trace …?
esther jones