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three children and an adult move away in the dusk, down the track - whether returning to the light of the tent, or deeper into the marsh, perhaps on a nocturnal nature walk. A number of relations can be envisaged between the group of walkers and the sometimes mobile sometimes static observer, filming as they move away. Certainly the viewer is being left further behind, perhaps the way a protagonist in a fairy tale becomes separated from the others, who fail, at least for a critical period - to notice the absence - so they are lost. They themselves also at the critical moment inexplicably do not call out, thereby failing to break the spell, allowing the fatal distance to accumulate. The catching of the subject at this moment of disregard, when the others, far from holding in mind, are thinking, even speaking together of something else: that is one - that is the kind of familiar configuration we could identify, among many others

.. perhaps, after this experiment, we long to run after the others and rejoin the collective ..

of course it's not any collective but a family, as we know. It is hard to say how and why this family, which I want to call for the time being family rogue, is the subject of this attention ..
The term "famille rogue" is from wiped out, 2001, which represents a kind of return to work, in the way that somebody like Jeff Wall or Jérôme Bel underwent hiati followed by returns : to representation or to dance .. in this case via a reading of a poem by Ponge in which a cluster of blackberries (mûres), unevenly ripened, is characterised as a famille rogue, provoking various reflections, inter alia: the cluster of berries forms a motley family grouping: disparate, maybe ethnically varied, not homogeneous certainly .. A facing (mis)translation using the (legitimate) dictionary definition of rogue: "haughty" seemingly threatens to prevent the opening of this reflection .. and so it goes on..

We were picking berries at Green Dale a few days ago .. then finding Ponge on a shelf with signéponge then the London riots and unrest - strange outgrowths in the urban landscape .. we don't know yet what fruit they could bear ..

But there's more to it too : the decision to work with in the family : in this grouping .. at the same time to invest so disproportionately in the family as an experiment - unprecedented .. conventional .. ingrained - it's something migrants do, it's something free thinkers talk about - attitudes with a certain arrogance, even haughtyeven - think of Thoreau or some ..

Of course the starting point is conventional: having children is a : hardly a radical decision .. it's not an economic decision it's a : jump in to the new - but what happens as that novelty is curbed? answ : a project to contest (in short): the co option of the Family (big F) for the production of the Autonomous Individual ..

You love that title "O Pioneers!" - it captures the emotional affinity and the exasperation with the posture of The Pioneers - those fiercely energetic yet strangely cack-handed homesteaders and heads of household - Pa with his fiddle - leading their captive audiences into every kind of danger and deprivation

.. the proposition - by a series of rough, inconclusive, and contradictory interventions - of such and such a household as a site of social and artistic experimentation - the house as experimental building - the relationships in the household as a growing place for new collectives - the individual as deeply rooted in the family (small f) as an experiential field / medium -

it follows that everything is at stake in the fabric of the every day: barely perceptible on the edge of dispersal .. the documents of that inquiry are correspondingly fleeting - captured .. by accident as interference or .. background sound

On one hand a sense of belonging is reiterated: the familiar, the quotidian, everyday and night are the ground of a domestic fabric - identifying with the others as they are moving away - being drawn to them - on the other there is a sense of expectation: at this micro level it is possible to observe : constant seeding of unexpected forms .. invoking a radical openness of the basic collective: this wandering band - really a surprising bunch! .. sprouting and spreading : never reproducing true to type

..