(1987, duration 8:35min)
The reader by the window has finished his book and tells the hour by the lateness of the sounds…Imagine for him the speech he cannot speak.
– Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)
She says to herself if she were able to write she could continue to live. Says to herself if she could write without ceasing. To herself if by writing she could abolish real time. She would live.
– Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951 – 1982)
In this invented landscape, composed entirely of fragments from published writing by Theresa Cha and Wallace Stevens, the separate lives of the late poets are sutured together in one moment, their presence sustained as a dialogue on the act of writing, on seeking meaning through language, on losing time, on continuing to live.
Male and female voices speak — syncopated and in unison and alone, in French, English and Korean. They are answered in handwriting, printed text and American Sign Language. Here is a density of exchange and rumination as private and elusive as memory itself, as ineffable as the speech (we) cannot speak.