WAITING - launderette lecture theatre

The main speaker hasn’t arrived yet but their introducer is already on stage. We hear the audience murmuring. We are conscious of the camera person having to follow the man as he moves within the shallow space he’s confined in, pinned in our view. Portraits of people waiting in a launderette forty years earlier are collaged into the scene, appearing erratically. Their stillness points up his movement, though sometimes his movement makes it seem they move too. The video makes no attempt to suggest they are in the same space but something seems to happen between them.

The projection, which is waiting for the artist Moyra Davey to come onto the stage, is from her Whisky Bottles photo series. She often incorporates very old work in new ones and this was probably an influence for Waiting.