passing

Passing is a synchronised three screen video and sound installation, (7 mins) shown on a seamless loop. It was commissioned by the Hayward Gallery, London for its Turnaround exhibition programme and installed so that it could be viewed from the concrete walkway of the South Bank Centre 24 hrs a day over a six week period, the sounds of voices in the work mingling with the ambient sounds of the city.

Filmed with three fixed cameras operating simultaneously the work shows choreographed walking sequences across the concrete walkway outside the Hayward at night. Using forward and reverse sequences in the edit, the shots appear to track the feet of people over a very long and continuous distance.

The feet are seen weaving in and out of this space, slipping through the gaps between the screens and disappearing and reappearing in and out of the frame. These intimate shots dissolve into expansive and remote aerial shots of the London at night. There is an underlying and continuous sound of static. Rising above this sound, fragments of disparate voices are heard, as if in passing. Each person describing a different woman with dark hair and brown eyes that they know intimately. It is never clear whether they are talking about the same or different women. At first these fragments seem unrelated but as the work unfolds connections may be made as the viewer begins to construct their own narrative connections. The work sets out to explore intimacy and loss, and the experience of temporal spatial enfolding within the fragmented urban environment. The mirrors the viewers encounter with the installation, from the outside on the walkway where it was shot, which is experienced in passing.