Things Take the Time They Take is comprised of nine individuals memorizing Marianne Moore’s 3-line poem “Poetry” on camera. After executing the task myself, each participant was filmed alone: I gave them the poem, paper and pen, and left them to do whatever was necessary and take as long as they needed to recite the poem without the prompt. Within the installation each person occupies their own video pane and is looped within their own time: when they finish the task, they exit the frame and their loop begins again. As such, the installation is never in two moments the same; a new poetry emerges through the accidental interplay of the looping improvised performances.

As a large-scale work, these images are projected life-sized on the gallery wall.