Saturday January 11, 10 AM–6 PM London | 24 Grafton Street
Saturday January 25, 11 AM–7 PM Paris | 108, rue Vieille du Temple
On the occasion of our concurrent exhibitions of On Kawara’s work in London and Paris, we’re pleased to host two readings from the artist’s epic One Million Years, one of his best-known works.
One Million Years speaks directly about what is relevant to us all: the passage and marking of time. All readings follow the same format, developed by the artist—counting slowly from the past towards the present, or from the present into the future—to continue until all volumes have been read aloud.
Since 1993, 39 live readings and sound installations of One Million Years have been conducted. The events in London and Paris will mark the 40th and 41st installments of the project.
One Million Years is a group of twenty-four works, twelve spanning past millennia and twelve spanning the future. Respectively titled One Million Years: Past and One Million Years: Future, each work comprises ten binders containing, in total, two thousand pages of text. To create One Million Years, Kawara devised a cut-and-paste method in which columns of single digits could be glued to grids of numbers that had already been typed. Final sheets were photocopied to conceal glued areas, then fit in transparent plastic sleeves and bound in individually boxed volumes.
In 1993 Kawara expanded One Million Years to encompass live and recorded readings, which allows the project to be both preserved and perpetuated through public recitation. Since then, One Million Years has been the subject of numerous other live readings and recordings around the world. All readings follow the same format, developed by the artist: readers appear in pairs, one male-identifying reader, who reads odd-number dates, and one female-identifying reader, who reads the even numbers (gender non-conforming readers may choose which set of dates they wish to read). Each new session begins where the previous one ended— counting slowly from the past to the present, or from the present into the future—to continue until the contents of all ten volumes of both works have been read aloud.
