THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

14.  The floor of a cage is littered with pages from the Old Testament.  For a month, a record is kept of the words upon which a hummingbird comes to rest.  A text is written using only these words.

20.  In the United States a voyage is undertaken to photograph towns with names that are homonyms of towns in other countries.  The itinerary, which connects them by passing through each town only once, goes around the country in thirteen thousand kilometers.  The trajectory commences in New York, follows the coast to the south, heads west up to the Pacific, climbs back up north, and follows the Canadian border to the north-east before returning to the starting point.  The route is traversed by car.  The towns crossed are, in alphabetic order:

AMSTERDAM, BAGDAD, BELFAST, BELGRADE, BELLEVILLE, BERLIN, BETHLEHEM, BETHUNE, BRISTOL, CALAIS, CAMBRIDGE, CANTON, CARLSBAD, CARTHAGE, CLERMONT, CUBA, DELHI, DUBLIN, FLORENCE, FRANKFORT, GLASGOW, HEIDELBERG, JERICHO, JOHANNESBURG, LIMA, LIERPOOL, MACON, MADRAS, MADRID, MANCHESTER, MELBOURNE, MEXICO, MILAN, MILO, MONTEVIDEO, NAPLES, ODESSA, OXFORD, PANAMA, PARIS, PEKING, POTSDAM, ROME, ROTTERDAM, SAINT-CLOUD, SEVILLE, STOCKHOLM, STUTTGART, SYRACUSE, TORONTO, TOULON, VERSAILLES.

In these towns, photographs are taken of places that are “common” in the double sense of being banal and being gathering spots for the community.  Each photograph is accompanied by a title: Cuba’s Town Hall; A Bar in Berlin; Supermarket in Rome; Hair Salon in Paris; A Street in Versailles.  Descriptions that are misleading, without being false.

87.  Several young fairies in a semicircle in a forest lift their dresses to show their stomachs upon which each has tattooed a red “R”.  Photograph.

Leve/Works