SAY HI FROM ME

(A live telephone conversation with accompanying live video documentation, 13 mins,
DECEMBER 2015)

 

“I have eyes in the place of ears” (Cocteau, J. The Human Voice)

 

Two stools. One has a phone, the other a videocamera.

-The phone rings.

-A participant picks it up and sits on the stool.

-An onlooker is invited by the participant to start filming.

 

Say Hi From Me is an encounter, a play and a home video. It is the artist, director, participant, actor, onlooker and audience shoe-horned into a three-way conversation. The artist, via the phone and from somewhere unknown, directs fragments of Cocteau's play The Human Voice, supplying lines and actor training techniques to the participant whilst asking them to relay
shot-by-shot filming instructions to the onlooker.

 

Say Hi From Me uses an intimate phonecall and a theatrical backdrop to create a model that encourages participants to act out roles drawing attention to the performative identities in the everyday. Intimacy and gesture are defined and scrutinised both visually and aurally, as we reflect upon our own physicality through the eyes and ears of others. 

 

Say Hi From Me is inspired by the challenges faced when attempting to construct live situations that explore unstructured novel behaviour. It explores what it means to participate in live-art, what comes from control, what is outside control, what is known and what is unknown.