Sylvia Gruner, Un Chant d'Amour 
Nov 22–Dec 18, 2005
 
PARTICIPANT INC presents Silvia Gruner, Un Chant d’Amour, an installation comprised of two single-channel videos and site- specific elements based on the only film directed by writer Jean Genet. In her forthcoming essay, “At the Margins of Silvia Gruner’s Un Chant d’Amour,” Irmgard Emmelhainz has described Un Chant d’Amour: Silvia Gruner’s video Un Chant d’Amour, 2004, shows a close-up of the artist and two men at a space divided by a wall performing an erotic dialogue. Enacting the signs of amorous desire, the characters make an effort to communicate with the person on the other side through a tiny hole. The camera pans back and forth [across] two sides of the wall while the three characters exchange places, attempting to reach out to each other by mingling their breaths with cigarette smoke, passing the smoke through the hole with a straw... At certain moments, one of the performers blocks the hole with chewing gum, sealing off the other’s discontinuous presence.