The Book of Everyday Instruction

'In The Book of Everyday Instruction—which presents a body of work developed between 2015 and 2018, split into eight chapters—Bass radicalizes the language through which we experience, navigate, and discuss intimacy. She surrenders the role of author in this evolving narrative, and instead approaches each chapter with an eagerness to let the story write itself. Bass imagines a series of interpersonal interactions wherein she shares creative license with her collaborators, an eclectic group of strangers she finds on the internet, through research, and within her diverse creative communities of practice.' - Nico Wheadon, The Brooklyn Rail

'Instead of setting the stage for familiarity and comfort as politeness most often does, Bass' announces the space in which she lets us know what she will and will not do for us. It is a smile that says, 'No.'; It is the space in which she articulates her refusal to take control, to tell you what to think, to look for you, to, in a certain dramatically put sense, be 'The Artist'; Which is not at all to say there is nothing to say, nothing to read or see – what there is is vast and infinitely specific and imbued with a rare intelligence and sentiment. But the only way you can see it is to take responsibility for your own seeing. To take responsibility for yourself as another singularity, a specific singularity bringing with it all the historical baggage that is positionality. Bass invites us to play a different game, one in which neither the rules nor we are familiar.' - Bill Dietz, 'Politesse against the social' 

In 2015, conceptual artist Chloë Bass began a two-year chronicle of one-on-one social interactions, beginning with the question 'How do we know when we're really together?' Through private performances, interactive experiences, text installations, interviews and photography, Bass explored the pair relationship, expanding ideas of place, history, activity, and distance. 

In developing the project, Bass conceptualized the book as an exhibit; now, in collaboration with The Operating System, she presents an exhibit as a book.