Who Knows (2014) is an installation comprising 12 pairs of colored neon phrases, modeled on the declension of the verb “to know” which moves though a simple set of variations and reversals. Like much of Etchells’s work Who Knows reveals a fascination with rules and systems in language and in culture, especially in the way these structures are both productive and constraining. The work’s repetition and recombination of individual phrases — “I know,” “You know,” “We know,” “They know”— produces a playful paranoia, nodding to the prescient topics of state and corporate surveillance, snooping and data-harvesting. Who Knows was first shown at Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, as part of a collaboration with the PuSh Festival.

The director of Forced Entertainment discusses a particular strand of documentary performance work by his Shefffield-based ensemble. The performance text of Instructions for Forgetting is a collection and collage of text material by Etchells himself and letters, stories, and videos sent to him by friends. This experimental documentary is a performance essay on the topic of stories and their importance to the making and understanding of the world.