Visitors wrote letters describing their lives in 2006, to the future citizens of Victoria one hundred years in the future. Whispering voices filled the room, asking the questions that we imagined people in the future might wonder about our lives today.
On being invited to participate in Live Art 2: Time Pieces, I asked the curator if she would describe the possible spaces where I might perform. My practice has been to create performances in response to particular locations.
I was pleased to learn that the gallery was located in a 19th century mansion. I chose to site my performance in the former dining room of the house, using the table that occupied the center of the room. She wrote a description of the room and sent pictures, so I knew that it retained a 19th century feeling, with cabinets and sideboards and paintings. I then proceeded to search the internet for books published in Victoria from the late 19th and early 20th century, at the time the mansion was first built and occupied by the Spencer family.
In designing the performance, I initially considered creating a performance concerning our questions about the past, about living in the 19th century. Having done research on that era for another project, I knew that there are many gaps in our knowledge of that time. But then I began to wonder what someone 100 years in the future, in 2106, might wonder about our lives today. And it is from that perspective that I decided to construct the performance.
I considered making audio recordings of visitors to the gallery, speaking to those in the future about our lives in 2006. This is when I chose the title, Collecting Voices. But I came to realize that current recording technology has a short life, and the likelihood of anyone in 2106 being able to listen to our compact disc recordings was slim. I chose instead the more stable method of using acid-free paper and archival pens. I hope that these will not fade with time!
I next asked members of Mobius Artists Group in Boston, of which I am a member, to assist me. I asked them to generate questions that they imagined someone in 2106 might ask of us now. Five artists in the group agreed to be recorded: Larry Johnson, Joanne Rice, Margaret Bellafiore, David Miller, and Alisia L.L. Waller. Each person’s questions revealed a different set of concerns, a different projection of the future…
I edited the recordings, adding long periods of silence between each question. On the day of the performance these played softly, whispering from the corners of the room, so that visitors had to sit in the chairs placed nearby in order to hear them. Located around the room were the old books about Victoria that I had collected. People could also sit and read those books.
I sat at the end of the table, dressed in white, blindfolded. I sat for 7 hours, generating additional questions for the audience to consider. In the middle of the table were boxes of paper, pens, and signs for the visitors suggesting that they listen until they heard a question that they wanted to answer, and then write to someone in the future.
Over the hours I entered a kind of trance, feeling as if I were both located in 2006 looking back to 1906 as well as being projected forward into 2106 looking back at 2006. No recording exists of my questions, though perhaps they might be seen in the letters that people wrote… They placed their letters in the metal box that was placed in the archives of the gallery, to be opened in 2106. I never read the letters, as they were addressed to others, in the future.
The next day was Family Day at the Art Gallery. Parents and children arrived to participate in art making activities, centered in the room adjacent to the gallery in which my performance had taken place. In the hubbub of the children’s activities, I set up a place for making audio recordings with the children talking to people in the future.
