‘I often don’t know what I’m writing about. The writing comes before the thought,’ says French artist and performer Ndayé Kouagou. Watching the two video works in his forthcoming exhibition, ‘A Message for Everybody’ at Gathering in London, this quickly becomes clear.
They feature a number of meandering monologues, rife with diversions. Replacing his voice with a deadpan AI-sounding one, speaking the didactic language of the social media influencer, he follows his nose from one morsel of advice or anecdote to the next. Often, it’s difficult to work out what’s profound and what’s meaningless.
