The location is an empty city shop or gallery space, with a large window facing the street. By day, I appear inside the space as a figure in white overalls, moving back and forth across the window, engaged in the repetitive task of slowly covering and uncovering the window with sheets of A4 tracing paper. A video camera records this activity. By night, engaged in the same task, I repeatedly cross paths with the video projection of my earlier self. Both figures are engaged in uncovering and recovering the window and the streetscape which lies beyond it, but in different time frames. Attention is drawn to the street-front window as the barest of membranes, confusing outside and inside, public and private, now and then so that the 'normal' position of the urban viewer/voyeur is blurred temporally and spatially. Within the interstitial space of a shop window, the city streetscape is passed through a thin filter of time, questioning what otherwise seems fixed and concrete, highlighting the ordinary and the everyday and opening up a fresh space for reverie and play within the highly regulated and relentlessly scopic public domain.
Execution
I enter the space in the morning, mount a video camera on a tripod and set it to record. I then methodically block out the street-front window with sheets of semi-transparent A4 tracing paper, forming a gridded screen across the entire window. The streetscape and its activities are systematically erased from the camera's recording eye whilst the interior of the space is gradually hidden from public view. I then remove each sheet of A4 tracing paper, restoring complete visibility in both directions. I turn off the video camera and leave the space.
The next stage of the performance occurs at night. A video projector inside the space projects the earlier recording onto the uncovered window. I repeat the action of slowly covering the window with A4 tracing paper. The paper gradually becomes a back-projection screen, transmitting the video recording of my earlier movements onto the other side of the window. The live night-time performance intersects and overlaps with the pre-recorded daytime performance, constantly incorporating passers-by into its play with time. I then remove the paper. This process of covering and uncovering can be repeated any number of times. There is no beginning, middle or end to the work.
Technical and site specifications
I am self-sufficient as far as technical apparatus is concerned. I have my own video camera, tripod, video projector and VCR. public address requires an empty city shop or shopfront gallery with a street window approximately 4 metres wide x 3 metres high. This is the ideal window size, but the work can be adapted to slightly different dimensions if necessary. There needs to be at least 5 metres depth inside the shop for a human-scale projection onto the window. The interior of the shop must be as dark as possible. The ambient light out on the street cannot be too bright or the video projection will be poorly illuminated and the work will be difficult to read out on the street.
Anne Walton
March 2004
QuickTime video documentation of public address is at:
http://www.rcca.co.uk/archive/publicaddress/index.html
