For abstraction end and things like that Hagar Tenenbaum collects text excerpts based on her visual memory: details of walks, books, films, You Tube, tea bags and conversations. She memorizes the texts, transposes them in rhythms and intertwines them within existing songs. Simultaneously with this unceasing stream of words, a choreography of hands arises. With a delicate feeling for simplicity and humour, she analyses herself and her environment, switching between observer and observed.
Hagar Tenenbaum: “abstraction end and things like that is a selection of accumulated mnemonics-cum-songs and movements from the last six months. I cut and paste words, I break and adhere them, while a pair of oversized plastic hands grabs and dances through the air, changing its consistency as meanings disappear (and re-appear) into a chasm of ruptured words. I wonder whether I should understand or feel. I’m a collector, I’m an animator, I am as much a thing as the things that use other things to make things.”
abstraction end and things like that is dedicated to Rita.
The piece premiered at STUK (Leuven) in May 2016 and has been presented at ISELP (Brussels) and Grand Union Gallery (Birmingham).
