Cloakroom Deposits
in collaboration with Ant Hampton (Rotozaza)
Site-specific performance-installation
2002
Presented at Stoke Newington Festival, in the underground cloakrooms of the Assembly Hall, Stoke Newington, London.
The audience is taken through two cloakroom spaces, adjacent to each other. On the way in, an attendant asks each visitor for a small object, something you might find in the bottom of a pocket. In darkness, his torch flickering, a description of that object is recorded on dictaphone, played back to you as you wait amongst heaps of seemingly senseless tickets, a model railway, voices counting, stories caught between a dark silence and quivering presence. As you exit into the second cloakroom, you find your object amongst thousands of others:
almost invisible ear-wax
a plaster
a corner of a handwritten note
hair
a fish
a chocolate
a cinema ticket
a tissue
a chewed gum
a nut
a pair of ear-plugs
best quality hair grips
flight ticket from lima
a scented towelette
a receipt from Barcelona airport
Marriott Hotel membership card
empty packet of crisps
matchbox from Shanghai China
a flower
a stone
a price label
BBC world service business card
bus ticket
odeon cinema ticket for Pollock screen 2
a crisp
an empty clarity pill case
a whisper
a sniff
a crumb, ...
