The John Woolrich string quartet 'Kleine Wanderung' from A Book of Inventions has been set to a film by artist/director/Theatre Maker Tim Hopkins. The video, which shares its title with the Woolrich, is a direct response to the music and is comprised of recordings of the Paris streets that Hopkins made in 2017 alongside original paintings. The shots of the Paris Metro and shifting artworks conjure up the notions of journeying, as the music does too.

 

The Benyounes Quartet are the performing musicians in a recording made in Parish Church of St Mary and The Parish Church of St Mary and St Eanswythe, Folkestone with sound engineer Louis Write.

 

Woolrich has compared this short quartet to Robert Walser's prose work 'A Little Wandering' (which inspired the title) stating that the two share the structure of a short series of episodic journeys. A further literary comparison by Woolrich is to Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy in which the continual digressions seem to be a meandering way to avoid or prolong an inevitable fate.

 

Tim Hopkins' video is available to view on the artist's website.