The Source Book offers a parallel space of reflection occasioned by the exhibition. Three extraordinary essayists – Diedrich Diederichsen, Vanessa Desclaux and Thierry Davila – were invited to encounter the artist’s mercurial practice in different contexts. They speculate on his inventive approach to temporality, to the spaces of theatre, film and performance and to the workings of memory, meaning and art historical reference. As a further resource to his imaginary method, Farmer himself recomposes visual and textual fragments of his exhibition, which after one-month of daily transformation, came to be known as Forgetting Air.
“Farmer explores the possibility of translating a literary fiction into his own visual art practice. In literature, Farmer seems to have found unique narrative structures that echo his obsession with the anti-hero, the double or the copy and his desire to unfold narratives in time, oscillating between movement and action, expression of emotions and depiction of landscapes.”
— Vanessa Desclaux
Published with the financial support of The Canadian Embassy, The Hague; Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada; Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.