Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping is a recontextualization and creative response to everything I overheard and then documented in various areas around London, combining both listening and walking. 

In my process group, we did a small workshop of redoing an existing piece of writing in a few ways, cutting them up and arranging them to tell a new story. This loosely inspired the idea to do the same, though with verbal conversations I was never meant to pay attention to. The word “flavor” from the brief also impacted how I ended up viewing the project, though this didn’t come out until after I had processed a couple days of documenting the words I heard. 

Depending where you were, themes could easily be extracted, even from the simplest of phrases - in a way, each area is a collective of shared experiences. There is a commonality and relatability between those sharing the same spaces, which gets into our group’s overall symposium idea and has led to a lot of new revelations myself. Creating “free verse” poems from what I eavesdropped, I tried to capture the overall sentiments of those spaces - the “spirit” of them and what I felt while I listened. I used slightly different mediums, all present in my practice already, to bring those poems to life. I am an extremely conversational researcher - observing and “listening” was a unique experience for me, but it further deepened my inclination to emotion and expression. 

It also led to an interesting question, which was - is a collective still a collective if it is not consensual?

What have you learnt or uncovered by using these research methods that surprised you?

How hard it is to listen to conversations not meant for you! Haha
That themes can uncover themselves if you take the time to explore new areas and new modes of research - I came into a lot of realizations and ideas while listening that I did not expect.

How can these research methods help connect you to the topics that are significant to you and your practice?

I’ve always been a conversationalist when it comes to research, but purely observing is something I haven’t taken the time to do - I also think there is something about listening without first asking a question, that can get to an emotional answer / discovery. I am deeply invested in the human experience, and the human experience is a shared one - the more unique perspectives you take on, the more you listen to those you otherwise walk right past, the more you learn.