"Animals presage earthquakes by several days.  Cattle grow restless, birds fall silent, pets go missing.  They sense the infant seismic stirrings that will mature into catastrophe.  Collapse.  Something is always slipping while our lives sit balanced on the edge.  Put together a world that holds, the way it used to be.  A cup is missing its saucer.  Put this one with this.  If that works, try a bolder move: this couch with these drapes, this body with that time.  Now change your father, become your ancestor, find the family you lost, the purpose you missed."




Liz Magor, "White House Paint," Real Fictions: Four Canadian Artists (Sydney: Museum of Contemporary Art, 1996).