Rirkrit Tiravanija b. 1961
(Ghost Reader C.H.) 2002
Video, single channel, colour and sound
Duration: 8hours, 30min

In his 2003 piece Ghost Reader, Tiravanija depicts Annlee in an eight-hour film where she reads Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, the novel which inspired Blade Runner. The main theme of the text is empathy, or rather the androids’ lack of empathy; it is the yardstick for what it means to be human. Drawing intense similarities between the robots of the novel and Annlee, the piece is self-referential. Despite her own technical and perpetual “hollowness”, the nature of her very existence in the realms of art means that she is never truly empty. Rather, she is imbued with the spirits of a historical collective who will unremittingly bring her to life.