Lesen in Staub, das wilde Lieben (Reading in dust, the wild love) (1984) Miriam Cahn (b.1949, Switzerland) Charcoal on paper 59.5 x 84 cm Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Australia Recorded January 14, 1997

In cinema, all great performances are etched in black and white complemented by utter silence. Most of those performances are destined to dissolve with the highly impermanent celluloid that gives them life. Miriam Cahn invokes the dust of those performances in these silent figures that seem to be startled as much by their sudden animation as they are by existing in a world newly charged with sound. Here then is the instant of aural shock, the figures caught helpless in the first wave of a wild noise already changing everything.