Lavinia Greenlaw: Audio Obscura
In the busy public spaces of London’s St Pancras International Station, everyday dramas are constantly being acted out; people waiting or rushing, engaged in conversation or lost in their own thoughts. In Audio Obscura, equipped with headphones, you enter the crowd and overhear voices around you. What did that woman mean? Did he really say that? Does she realise what she is saying? You might wish you hadn’t listened or you might want to know more. You will look for stories and you might even find them…
A co-commission with Manchester International Festival, Audio Obscura is a new sound work by award-winning poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw. In an aural equivalent to the camera obscura, the audience experienes the project in a solitary way – hearing fragments of individual narratives, glimpses of interior worlds drawn from monologues that glance off one another, hovering between speech and unconscious thought.
Overhearing these voices, the listener becomes immersed in private thoughts, emotions, recollections and confessions in a very public space, projecting what they hear onto the people they see.
Lavinia Greenlaw’s Audio Obscura is on now daily until 23 October at the lower concourse, St Pancras International Station, London.
