In the Midst

Installation commissioned for the exhibition In Light of Transient Aims at the Swiss Church, Covent Garden. A line of text along the apse of the Church reads ‘He who comes shall not be cast out’ (John 6.36). This line is translated, truncated and displaced externally onto the front façade using a combination of vinyl lettering and video images of text being scripted onto dermagraphic skin using a needle - a candid reference to the church’s locatedness two doors down from a shelter housing a number of persons with severe drug addictions. The text is situated so that when the door to the Church is closed the line reads ‘HE WHO COMES SHALL NOT BE CAST OUT’; when the door is open it reads ‘HE WHO COMES SHALL BE CAST OUT.’ Meanwhile, bits of textual ‘detritus’ distributed across the façade present a metaphorical conjunctive to the issues raised in the project while serving, perhaps, as a kind of epitaph: ‘With the dust of the once-was settling, like a choice …’ Initially conceived as an attempt to integrate the inside of the church with its geographical and sociological outside, In the Midst ultimately reflects the seeming futility of this endeavour by physically ‘thickening’ the church façade with layers of text, video images and objects.