9 Minutes of Form: A Sculpture by Liisa Roberts (1993)

9 Minutes of Form shows the artist’s hand as it writes on successive sheets of paper for the duration of three, three-minute-long rolls of film. And while one assumes from the valediction that the text is a letter, its contents remain illegible. The boredom of watching the action unfold in real time thus opens onto an awkward voyeurism, while the structural predetermination of Roberts’ repetitive gesture alludes to the potential futility of written communication.