WITNESS [fr.
témoin]
Witness is anyone passing, seeing something happening in the Emergency
Room, which could be reported or written down.
The artist is a witness.
Everyone is existing through someone’s eyes.
Everyone is taking notice of the existence of each other.
Everyone is looking at each other.
This looking is not always as surveillance, but sometimes it is.
Sometimes as a view.
Sometimes as reflection.
Sometimes as speculation.
The witness can of course be touched by what he witnesses.
In Emergency Room some witnesses are witnesses by accident; others are
requested to be witnesses.
The writer and the art historian for instance.
Art historians are invited to witness the aesthetic of emergency, to
catch and possibly measure any change.
Viewers could be passing the institution, for instance, and come
accross the Emergency Room by mistake.
Or by chance: temoin malgrès eux.
Emergency art should be watched like an ornithologist--continuously and
with binoculars.
Emergency Room obsessively researches witnesses to make them witness
and even harass them until they speak to collect what they saw.
Emergency Room and the Delay Museum are also a swallowing collecting
dispositif.