The Fish is Reversing, 2010, 05:46 mins

“Does speech have to make sense? In addressing the topic of speechlessness, it may be that the opposite of speech is not silence, but rather meaningless noise. Larger questions must then be asked about how sense is made. The artist duo Chris+Keir explored the institutional mechanics of sense and nonsense with a presentation on their performance project This Fish Is Reversing. The pair have been working with an online database created by Touretteshero, an artist with Tourette’s Syndrome. The database holds written transcripts of her verbal tics, which have been made available as an open-source, creative resource. Chris+Keir have responded to this resource by making illustrative performances re-enacting a number of Touretteshero’s tics: ‘I’m a Lebanese balloon animal’, ‘disable the crisp’ or ‘Telescopic penis’, for example.”

Extract from Sounds and (Non)sense, Contemporary Theatre Review / Volume 22, Issue 1, 2012 (Helena Walsh & Johanna Linsley)

The duo Chris+Keir, made up of Chris Poolman and Keir Williams worked together between 2009 and 2011. Their interest lay in how humour, failure and a total lack of acting ability could be used as a performance strategy. Chris studied AHRC funded PhD at Birmingham City University researching stupidity in contemporary art; Keir completed his MAT (Media Art & Technology Doctoral Program) Scholarship at Queen Mary University London.