Stolen Voices is an ongoing collaboration with Johanna Linsley inspired by eavesdropping.

It is about listening-in, or the way listening is always positioned in space and in time. It is about overhearing, or the stuff we add to everything we hear – the biases and associations that help us construct identities for those who surround us. Finally, it is about the (often uncomfortably) unstable borders between private and public that we all negotiate by existing in common with others.

The work begins by imagining public spaces as semi-fictional constructions, to which the artists have been summoned, as though on a ‘mission’. By attempting to gain access, navigate and decode traces of the occurrence of an-as-yet undefined event, the location itself is acknowledged as host to an already occurring phenomenon. In this sense, we move away from considering perception as belonging to the individual towards an understanding that what is available for detection is already present within the existing atmosphere of a place.

Each version of the project is responsive to the site it is situated within. One of the central concerns is the construction of a participatory research inquiry that engages both with local community groups and public space.

This project is in partnership with Sound & Music, the Live Art Development Agency, Arts Bournemouth and Folkestone Fringe.

The work will be touring the North East, Mid West Wales, East Anglia and Folkestone in Spring 2016.

Stolen Voices was recently part of #Points of Listening, convened by Salomé Voegelin and Mark Peter Wright. Follow this link for some documentation of our London-based eavesdropping excursion.