Tracey Meek's Proposal: Spectate / Translate

Earlier in the year I accidentally stumbled on an idea for an intervention art piece. My inspiration for this was people and their many hidden lives and conversations.

I have lost count of the amount of times that I have caught the tail-end of a strangers conversation, wondered what the hell they must have been talking about, imagined where their lives take them... It has become like a sort of mini addiction for me, true you don't get the highs or the chattery teeth but there is great fun to be had in stealing snippets from strangers lives.

I wanted to share the love of this wondrous past-time and get people involved and really just see if people shared my enthusiasm for such a sport.

So, a number of illustrated tags were given out as means of documentation.

The holder of the tag was to see it not just as a bit of paper but as a mission. Their mission was to look and listen.

I have visions of people rushing straight out and furiously beginning their invasion of peoples privacy, or maybe they kept it on their person until the time came when they would catch the end of a conversation and stumble on a situation. There would of course then be a huge scramble for their tag and the scrawling of the words just then stolen from that strangers mouth. It may have been easily understood, maybe nonsensical. Either way it would be documented exactly as heard.

A few weeks later a marvelous event took place at Derby's Industrial Museum, there was music and wine and dancing and such things and sure enough the tags came back. They were called, they didn't just turn up. I then translated these 'spectations' in my own fanciful live-art type way.

Work shown at Bank Street will be a mix of the unfolding's from this event and translations since made. You may attempt to figure out which conversation goes with which illustration.

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