Oscar Tuazon — Shelters — Chantal Crousel Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 5 → April 16, 2016

Reading is a physical activity. Something bodies do with words. I want to make a space for that. A space for words, a place to read.

I live like that, in words. To read a word you recite it, you write it in your voice, take it in your mouth and say it. Whatever words they are, they are your words for a second. Speak the sounds aloud like a child does, become a voice.

There are things I don’t want to read but I read them. I feel I need to. Like I’m responsible, it’s a sentence. I’m compelled to. To read is to confront the other, the author, feeling another person speak through me, not quite a choice. A reader’s a witness. Another voice that’s not mine, intimate bodily violence. A mind orgasm.

I want a space for that. That’s what I tried to do when I lived here, make a space for reading with other people. I want to contain it but I found that you can’t. I read while I’m walking, it’s a physical activity. Words make their own worlds.

What I can do is build a bookshelf. Word furniture. Reading benches. Ways to look at words, alone and with others. Mostly alone, though, the way we are when we’re reading, with another person’s thoughts.

I am now ready to write.

— Oscar Tuazon, 2016