Jennie Guy’s Selected Crônicas was screened in the Totalkunst Gallery, Edinburgh as part of I AM NOT A POET, on the 18th August 2011. It was projected as part of a joint event with Tamarin Norwood, on the 19th August, when it was also one starting point for a discussion on language and art practice involving Jennie, Tamarin, Magdalen Chua,  and Gerry Smith.

Jennie’s description of the film is as follows:

With as little vocal or physical direction as possible Jennie Guy uses video and sound recordings of a cast of willing readers set in a remote location to reenact the crônicas of Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, originally published in the Jornal do Brasil between 1967 and 1973.

Jennie Guy, Selected Crônicas, film stills, 2011.

For I AM NOT A POET’s Assembling Publication, each artist was invited to contribute one sheet of A4, for a loose leaf publication assembled and distributed in the gallery on 21st August, the final day of the exhibition.

Jennie contributed the following text, footnoted with the observation that “This text is an informal postlude to Selected Crônicas, a video work which re-imagined several of Clarice Lispectors Crônicas, read in Italy July 2011.”

A Crônica

Two girls in a Japanese restaurant.

One in charge being more fluent with Sushi and such food. So she is trying to make sure the other is comfortable by explaining how nice this dish is and that dish you might not like, whilst still retaining sympathetic superiority.

When the waiter asks for their drinks order, two Sapporo rolls easily and fluently out of the girl in charge’s mouth.

Sorry, we have no Sapporo, we have Asahi and Kirin and Oron.

The friend, the one that isn’t in charge, casually asks the waiter, which one is better do you think?

Her friend, the one in charge looks a little upset but gathers back her momentum over lunch, nearly.

More about Jennie Guy’s work is here.  A script that VerySmallKitchen provided for Jennie’s READING ENSEMBLE project at Galway Arts Centre, January 2011, is here.