Jen Bervin

The video projection Faire et défaire c’est travailler / Doing and undoing it’s working (2021) by Jen Bervin with an original score by Catherine McRae, depicts the hands of three generations of family members writing, translating, erasing, and rewriting this applicable French expression, spanning small hands new to lettering, to aging hands finding embodied knowledge of writing increasingly difficult.

Also translated as “doing and undoing, it’s work”, this endlessly applicable expression reflects cycles of care intimately familiar during the COVID pandemic and is pertinent to the ongoing need for transformative learning and unlearning.