To Follow

The To Follow project enquires into the complex processes of inner listening
while experiencing the soundscape of the city

These enquiries led to an intense series of creative dialogues with an Austrian playwright, Wolfgang Kindermann, who produced a number of texts in response to my sound recordings encouraging a questioning of the real and imagined histories of place. 

The To Follow project combines a video projection Who/Wer with a series of handmade silkscreens prints.

The split screen video is an exploration of the power struggle between moving and still image; inner thoughts versus observed action. Reported and imagined text appear to leak into each other’s aural territory while presenting the complexities of European language; the spoken German text is heard at the same time as the English translation but is spoken with a Polish accent thereby necessitating an even more intense listening process.

The departure point for this piece is an examination of the familiarity and strangeness of a city’s soundscape, as experienced both by an insider and a stranger to the city. What is the native prepared to share and what can the stranger hear and see more clearly because of its unfamiliarity. How much are the exchanges designed to gain advantage one over the other.

The different characteristics of the images emphasize the duality of experiences and perspectives – that of the stranger/follower, and the city’s insider being followed. This duality is also present within the accompanying text, told by a male voice in German and a female voice in English. The language, gender, the tone and the rhythm of voices are different, interwoven together, they create a vocal sonic ‘tapestry’.

The set of handmade silkscreen prints explore the phenomenon of the boundary. Through the experience of the drifter/follower and the person being followed, the prints examine the notion of borders as boundaries: between private and public, as separations and as the outer layers of ourselves.

The piece was premiered in the exhibition Sounds Like Her October 2017. The exhibition challenges restrictive social constructs of female voices. The Arts Council England funded exhibition curated by Christine Eyene represents new perspectives; re-framing how we experience the dynamic of sound as practiced by women from diverse cultures and gender identities. 

Exhibited