The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, presents Tim Etchells's Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First, as part of its acclaimed Crossing the Line 2013 festival. Written and directed by Tim Etchells, leader of the UK's celebrated experimental performance group Forced Entertainment, Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First is a long free-associating monologue that tumbles from topic to topic to create a vast, failing iteration and explanation of the world, the things, forces, experiences, people and landscapes in it - what they are and how they work. Sight is the Sense... is performed by Jim Fletcher, best known for his work with Richard Maxwell's New York City Players and for his role in Gatz by Elevator Repair Service.
The performance of Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First will take place tonight, September 28 at 8pm at FIAF's Tinker Auditorium. Prior to the performance, Etchells will discuss his work and his fascination for how language is constructed and recycled in a free, public lecture that begins at 6pm. FIAF's Tinker Auditorium is located at 55 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenue). Tickets are $30 ($20 FIAF Members) and can be purchased by visiting fiaf.org/ctl or calling 800.982.2787.
Exploring the processes of describing and defining the world through language and the ways in which a lone speaking subject might approach this task, Sight is the Sense... embarks on a mission that is comically doomed from the outset. Structured as a maddening accumulation of un-linked facts, the performance-a virtuoso piece of recall by any definition -makes the viewer highly aware of the gaps in its grasp on the world, and in the narrative and conceptual possibilities created through its evolving sequencing of dissociated facts and opinions.
Tim Etchells is an artist, director and writer best known for his work as leader of the renowned performance ensemble Forced Entertainment, based in Sheffield, UK. Alongside his work with the group since 1984, Etchells has collaborated with a wide range of other artists, choreographers and writers and has created original works in diverse media from video to installation and works on paper. He has also developed a unique voice in writing fiction and in writing for and about performance (Certain Fragments, Routledge 1999). His first novel, The Broken World, was published by Heinemann, UK in July 2008. www.timetchells.com, www.forcedentertainment.com
Jim Fletcher is a long-time performer with Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players, with whom he has toured Europe and the United States for almost ten years, most recently in Ode to the Man Who Kneels. He is part of
Elevator Repair Service's production of Gatz, and will join them in Los Angeles this October for their show based on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. He often appears in the film and performance pieces of Participant, Inc. gallery in New York, and as a writer has worked closely with Bernadette Corporation. Recently he performed with Rafael Sanchez in Fandango! at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami.
Sight is the Sense that Dying People Tend to Lose First was commissioned by Tanzquartier, Vienna and is produced by Forced Entertainment.
