Franco-Algerian artist and musician Rilès has begun handwriting the entire Bible as part of ALL LOVE, a new durational performance at BSMT Gallery.
The project started on 5th October 2026 and has no fixed end date. Six days a week, Rilès writes from 10AM to 6PM, before spending the evening from 6PM to 10PM composing his next album. He rests on Sundays and will continue until the final page of the Bible has been transcribed. Only then will the music created during the project be released.
The work is less about religion than about endurance, belief and what happens when a sacred text is encountered through repetition and physical labour. Rilès does not identify with any religion and is not presenting the performance as an act of conversion. Instead, he is using the act of copying the Bible by hand to ask what sustained contact with the text might change in the way he thinks, lives and creates.
As he explains:
“I have no religion.
I preach no dogma.
I’m not here to convert anyone.
But I know there’s something.
I can’t give it a name,
so I explore different religions
and keep what resonates with me.I’m trying to understand what unconditional love is.
Some people wonder who wrote the Bible.
I wonder what it feels like to write it.
And whether it will influence my creative process. Or not.Artificial intelligence can create a song.
But it hasn’t lived what I’ve lived.
What you know changes what you hear.Whatever this text might stir in you,
I invite you to reflect on it.
ALL LOVE.”
The performance comes with a strict set of self-imposed rules. Rilès allows himself one lunch break a day, does not perform on Sundays, practises abstinence for the duration of the project and will not stop until the entire Bible has been handwritten. Every writing and studio session is livestreamed as what he describes as proof of human-made creation.
That emphasis on labour, repetition and visibility places ALL LOVE somewhere between music production, durational performance and a test of concentration. The handwritten pages are archived online as the project develops, while the music remains unreleased until the performance reaches its conclusion.
The project also continues a pattern in Rilès’ recent work, where music is increasingly inseparable from extended physical or performative acts. In 2025, Survival Run saw him spend 24 hours running on a treadmill in front of rotating saw blades. Later that year, he spent more than 24 hours hand-stamping 20,000 CD covers with red paint, turning each into an individual object.
Earlier this year, he toured Europe performing I Don’t Wanna Lose You repeatedly for an hour at each show, while his sold-out Accor Arena performance in Paris invited audience members to cut away pieces of his clothing and hair in a work referencing Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece.
ALL LOVE pushes those ideas of repetition and endurance further, but with a quieter and potentially more psychologically demanding structure. Instead of spectacle, the work is built around sustained attention: writing, reading, thinking and making music, day after day, until the task is complete.
Born in Rouen, Rilès Kacimi first gained wider attention through Rilèsundayz, a 2016 project in which he wrote, produced and released one new song every week for a year. Since then, he has built a practice that moves between music, visual art and performance, using self-imposed systems as a way of testing both creativity and physical limits.
With ALL LOVE, the question becomes less about how long he can endure the task than what the task might do to him.
Rilès: ALL LOVE, BSMT Gallery, 529 Kingsland Road, London E8 4AR
Started 5th October 2026, Monday–Saturday, 10AM–10PM Ongoing until completion
*Every writing and studio session is livestreamed in full (YouTube, X,TikTok and Twitch), except Sundays. The performance can also be followed on a dedicated website, where visitors can access the livestream and explore the handwritten pages completed each day.
