Most recent statement for "What do you love ?"


What do you love?

Ongoing interactive installation from 2002 – present

This work has been shown as an itinerant, ever-growing interactive mobile in which people can step in and write their answers to those questions:
what is the most important … date, person, object, place in your life? What do you love?
Participants can also write in their mother tongue if it isn’t English.

More than 200 people have already taken part since 2002. Already about 15 different languages: English, Welsh, French, Portuguese, Kurdish, Jamaican patois, Catalan, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Thai, Japanese.

Another part of the work consists in the never-ending translation of each single paper (individuals’ answers); each paper is numbered, the answers typed and then translated in as many different languages as possible. It takes the shape of a booklet. This work is not presented here.

“I am currently working collaboratively with the Language Café in Nottingham toward the production of a sound piece for Solo Heart Solo Art at the Nottingham Contemporary in July. The sound piece will consist of the artist trying to say people’s answers to the questions in different languages.” CSD

-   Piece commissioned for Common Ground, Stoke-on-Trent, 20
-  Taken part in Staffordshire University Diversity Award, 200
- Project having been conducted in different venues since 2002: Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme (New Vic Theatre), Stafford, Hanley Park.

Story of the work

“This piece started when I first arrived in UK, from France, in 2002. I was feeling very isolated and frustrated by the barrier of the language. As an art student, I addressed this issue by going to people and asking them to answer a couple of questions on a piece of paper (what are the most important … date, person, object, place in your life? what do you love?). Over the years, it became an ever-growing, interactive and itinerant mobile.”

“I consider this project as a spiritual piece. I see it as a continuous attempt to look at what people have in common, beyond cultures, religions and languages. The time when you read other people’ answers and when you write your own is a time of reflection and sharing. The papers chosen* are usually used for different rituals in China and other countries but similar practices can be found all around the world in various religions or traditions: Ex-Voto in Catholicism, Wishing Trees, Ema (Japan) …”

*Hell/heaven money, ghost or spirit money, Joss paper

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