麻豆约拍

I鈥檓 here, in a kitchen in Le Kremlin-Bi莽etre surrounded by post-it notes and packets of instant noodles, to introduce you to the artist Billy Yen鈥檚 Oubliettes.
Yen, appropriately, is not here. He left an hour ago to pour a ring of salt around the Arc de Triomphe. I asked if he wanted to add any information about his life to this broadcast. His response: 鈥淐hildhood is a book to be filed next to Youth and Exile.鈥� But he agreed to let me stay in his kitchen until he returns.
I discovered Yen鈥檚 work through his 鈥楶romises鈥�. These 鈥楶romises鈥� were written with marker pen on post-it notes and stuck to various blue plaques across London. He has never spoken publicly about his work, let alone the painful details of his life. Among the wider public it鈥檚 his Oubliettes that have made the most impact.
For the last decade, Yen has been preoccupied with the question of how to convey what no longer exists, what is beyond retrieval. The Oubliettes are identical works for performance, named Oubliette 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Each is a room without walls, a packet of noodles without noodles or packaging. They emerge from a paradox: forgotten things are powerful exactly because they cannot be retrieved, but how to speak of that?
Yen is the enemy of a culture obsessed with remembering. He hates outward memorializing (such as the blue plaques he defaces); he hates the internal symptoms of memorializing, too. He is opposed to the concept of repression, which suggests trauma is only in hiding, waiting to return. If his work has one message it is this: some things really are lost, beyond return. Until you recognize that loss, you won鈥檛 know the pain of what you鈥檝e lost.
Now it remains for me to leave you to enjoy the following performances of Oubliettes 1, 2 and 7.