A Score for the Present - Agnes Denes X Circa

A Score for the Present

On a forested trail beside the Horniman Museum in South London — once a railway line that carried visitors to Crystal Palace, now reclaimed by trees — I stand in response to the wind.

The camera rests on the ground. I enter the frame, settle, and let my body follow what moves through the canopy above me. For as long as it feels right, I sway. Then I leave.

The piece was made in response to Agnes Denes' Another Confrontation, a questionnaire for the future broadcast across CIRCA's screen network at Piccadilly Circus, exchanging bread for public responses to eleven ecological and existential questions. Denes' Wheatfield: A Confrontation (1982) planted wheat on a Manhattan landfill — a present-tense gesture made indifferent to the abstractions surrounding it.

A Score for the Present asks what it might mean to follow that indifference with the body. Plants do not correct in hindsight. They move with what is moving now.