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## The rest is silence (2001)

by Joelle Bitton

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For the one who remains silent, silence is a moment of solitude, of retreat. For the lover, it’s the moment of interpretation. There is a reason to silence. What is that person trying to tell or not to tell? Is the silence upsetting or is it accommodating? Meanwhile, it matters to say anything just to keep the space from emptying itself, to fill the conversation gap. Banalities transformed in necessities. Subjects of discussion always ready to make up for the difficulty of communicating, and to also, mostly, feel full. These trivial words, gestures sometimes, exist to tell the other that it’s not about indifference. They are substitute for a more tricky vocabulary to use. Silence generates a parallel language: the emergency of talking out loud: so that you don’t let yourself become anguished, crazy, hysterical, so you can stay in control at all price, so you say anything just to ...

Tags: allegory audio body Conceptual desire Flash language memory Narrative Text Visual

###### Full Description

For the one who remains silent, silence is a moment of solitude, of retreat. For the lover, it’s the moment of interpretation. There is a reason to silence. What is that person trying to tell or not to tell? Is the silence upsetting or is it accommodating? Meanwhile, it matters to say anything just to keep the space from emptying itself, to fill the conversation gap. Banalities transformed in necessities. Subjects of discussion always ready to make up for the difficulty of communicating, and to also, mostly, feel full. These trivial words, gestures sometimes, exist to tell the other that it’s not about indifference. They are substitute for a more tricky vocabulary to use. Silence generates a parallel language: the emergency of talking out loud: so that you don’t let yourself become anguished, crazy, hysterical, so you can stay in control at all price, so you say anything just to say something. And sometimes, you reassure yourself when you realize that the silence that is not endured is also the one of pleasure.

In this interactive artwork, the user is faced with 12 empty canvases that can get filled each at a time with a piece of picture. The picture can reflect a situation or a moment of a couple. When the user clicks on the picture, he/she gets a piece of text. The text reflects further on a possible couple dialogue or a lover's introspection. When the user holds the click on the picture, a piece of a sound plays. The sound is always the one of a crowd, disturbing or interrupting the couple's silence.

The Rest is silence has been commissioned by panoplie.org for the thema : le silence. The pieces of text are in French.

###### Work metadata

- Year Created: 2001
- Submitted to ArtBase: Friday Sep 17th, 2004
- Original Url: http://www.superficiel.org/temp/silence
- Permalink: http://archive.rhizome.org/artbase/27821/silence/
- Work Credits:
  - Joelle Bitton, creator

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