Hello Stranger x Trans Gaze Installation
Hello Stranger Festival of Performance Design / Prague Quadrennial
An interactive audiovisual installation by Anna Clock created with technical sound designer Xavier Velastín & scenographic consultant E. M. Parry as part of the Hello Stranger Festival of Performance Design, which was the UK National Exhibition offering to the Prague Quadrennial 2023. The installation ran March - April 2023 in Deptford Lounge, and the archival video piece below was presented in Prague in June 2023.
Hello Stranger explores the idea of the trans gaze, seeking to reframe the experience of gender dysphoria as a superpower that questions notions of ‘oneness’ or ‘completeness’, opening up the possibility of a plural & ever changing experience of the world. It was an invitation for users of Deptford Lounge to listen to, look at, move through and touch the space in new ways.
Three satellite stations with microphones were positioned around the space. These processed users' voices using the pitch, rhythm and volume to create music, and acted as a kind of telephone system throughout the space, sending messages to other areas of the room.
When people spoke into any of the microphones, the audio was recorded and musically processed to become part of a generative soundscape playing through speakers in the central nest space. This soundscape was created from recordings of sounds made during a residency in Deptford Lounge and AI voices that imaginatively engage with the experience of the floor, walls and windows of this space, as well as the live recordings.
Users of Deptford Lounge were invited to follow the tape markings, share some thoughts with a microphone, and enter the nest in the centre of the space. Here they could stop a while, look, listen, touch and hear the fragmented vibrations of their body’s presence as it reverberated throughout the space.
Photos by Bex Wade
The installation was developed following these workshops, with contributions from Ioana Pitic, Mallika Joy, Alicia Jane Turner, Niamh Gaffney, Rosie Whiting, Julie Rose Bower, Rachel Sampley, Dana Pinto, Alys Whitehead, and support from The Albany, Arts Council England, the Society of British Theatre Designers (SBTD), Rose Bruford and Queen Mary’s University.
