Artist Tim Youd retypes St. Louis author William Gass’s 650-page epic novel, The Tunnel, on YouTube Livestream, May 1 through May 31, every day from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm CT. Tim Youd: The Tunnel Retyped, presented with Cristin Tierney Gallery, continues the artist’s 100 Novels project. Youd exhibited at CAM in 2018, which included a series of performances at the Museum and at locations related to four writers with St. Louis histories: William S. Burroughs, T.S. Eliot, Stanley Elkin, and Marianne Moore.
Due to stay-at-home orders, Youd retypes The Tunnel remotely via livestream in the garage of his Los Angeles home. Youd refers to Gass’s work as a “densely postmodern” novel about becoming increasingly trapped in one’s own circumstances and in one’s own mind. For Youd, his performative act will be akin to “tunneling out of the quarantine.”
Viewers may follow Tim Youd: The Tunnel Retyped by visiting tunnelretyped.com, where they may link to the YouTube Livestream, from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm CT each day. The artist will be visited by a guest close to the project on CAM’s Instagram Live each Friday at 1:00 pm, beginning with Lisa Melandri, CAM Executive Director, on May 1. Each subsequent Friday, Youd will speak with Misa Jeffereis, assistant curator at CAM; Allison Unruh, Brooklyn-based independent curator and former associate curator of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum; Joel Minor, curator of modern literature collection/manuscripts at Washington University in St. Louis; and Cristin Tierney, director of her eponymously named New York City gallery, which represents Youd. Viewers are encouraged to comment with their questions during the Instagram Live conversations.