The Walk Apart From You

Robyn Nesbitt and Nina Barnett spent August and September 2008 at the Cité Des Arts residency program in Paris. This time was a completely shared experience for the artists, they lived and worked in a common space and were rarely alone. Much of their time was spent in a comfortable silence, each involved in her own thoughts but a supporting counterpart to the other.

As an expression of this joint existence, the artists conceived a performative walk through Paris, along the banks of the Seine river. The walk began at the convergence of the river and the circular peripheral highway in the west, and ended at the eastern meeting point of the same markers. The artists began together and walked on opposite banks of the waterway. Each shot slides of the opposite bank at regular intervals, recording the space where the other should be. Because of the distance between the banks, there were few moments when the opposite figure walking was visible. This work became a performance of trust, an imagining of ones counterpart separate but connected, moving together.

The seventeen slides from each artist are shown on opposite sides of a rectangular white sign board. The slide projections take up only the right half of the board’s surface, leaving an empty, projection-sized space to the left – conveying awareness of another presence in the action without sight or sound of them.