Translated into English as The Order of Things Michel Foucault’s exploration of the ordering of representational systems was taken as a theoretical starting point for ‘les mots and les choses’ shown at Entwistle Gallery, London in 2003. Here three objects collected from these sites of memory were positioned in the slippage in language that occurs through translation and displacement. In moving, the words were translated from English to Korean and back again, from writing to speaking and back again, yet the objects appeared unchanged.

The work was exhibited at  ‘Les mots at les choses’, (text/object installation), for Material Intelligence, Entwistle Gallery, London, (March 2003), and published as ‘Les Mots et les Choses’, Laura Allen, Iain Borden, Peter Cook and Rachel Stevenson, (eds), Bartlett Works: Architecture, Buildings, Projects, (London: August Projects Ltd., 2004) and in ‘Site-Writing’, Sharon Kivland, Jaspar Joseph-Lester and  Emma Cocker, (eds.), Inscription, (Sheffield Hallam University and the Site Gallery, 2005). The work draws on an earlier essay ‘Longing for the Lightness of Spring’ in Elina Brotherus: The Wapping Project, (London, 2001).