Fanfare for Crossing the Road

2011 - Ongoing
Fanfare for Crossing the Road is an international project that adds ceremony to a common event. In each country I ask musicians – dressed in uniforms and positioned beside the traffic lights – to mimic the digital acoustic crossing sounds (different in every country) that signal the time to cross for the blind. The work began in the Spring of 2011 in front of the Albert Memorial in London.It has since been performed in Helsinki, Lisbon, Cardiff, New York , Philadelphia and Dublin.

Fanfare explores a different type of performance for me, in which I provide the “spectacle” – the musicians performing, while the pedestrians waiting to cross the road become the unwitting participants. The other “performance” is the particularities - the body language, the light, the buildings - of the city in which it is filmed. Like The Collector, by Francis Alÿs, where a small magnetic toy dog on wheels is pulled along city streets, collecting bits of metal, I have found that in each city where Fanfare has been performed it “collects” interest and response.

The work has been shown at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte, Helsinki – 2012; the 4th Wall Film Festival, Pedwaredd Wal, Cardiff – 2012; Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon – 2013; AC Institute, New York – 2014; Icebox Project Space, Philadelphia – 2015; and studio1.1, London - 2018.

To see the complete version go to  vimeo.com/31610655