Follow The Protest

2009. Audio recordings, call centre software, direct dial telephone connection, telephone, chair, table.
Part of Speech Acts, a series of works on a telephonic theme. Commissioned and first exhibited by the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis

Follow the Protest uses a phone connected to a call centre interface to offer audio recordings of interviews and other sounds recorded by the artist at the G20 protests in London in April 2009. The recordings include protest chants, a speech by political scientist Susan George, the sounds of police helipcopters overhead, and interviews with a variety of attendees, including a TV journalist, a protest organiser, local workers from an investment bank, and veteran protestors who have been attending similar protests for decades. The piece contrasts the experience of the typical banking-type phone call with the sound, passion and ‘liveness’ of direct action protest.