Give Me Something To Listen To (Hackney) Part I and II

Last week I planned a small, in-house version of Give Me Something To Listen To at ]performance space[ to try out a brand new, red booth i'm rocking at the Hackney Wick festival this weekend.

As I climbed into the booth at the entrance of the space, i spied a gate in the canal wall that surrounds the industrial estate and fantasised about doing a version there. It was a perfect spot and would have passing traffic as people walked and rode along the canal.

As I thought about it, one of the performance space studio artists - Marco Beradi - suggested we take the booth down there. Yes!

So we installed the new shiny red booth, balancing on a ledge, facing the canal path and a whole new performance took off.

It was fabulous!

"Hello!" I said about a thousand times.
Loads of people smiled or laughed.

Sometimes I scared a few peeps, or had to say a bit of an Alice In Wonderland-style "up here!" as people looked confoundedly around to an empty canal (because i was up slightly higher than regular eye height). They were happily relieved that it was just a slightly odd woman in a bright red booth.

It was a bit like fishing - casting out my headphone cable, hoping to grab a listening device on the way past. Perhaps I just thought of that analogy because I was overlooking the waterway.

There was so much smiling, so much good will. I could count on just one hand the grumpy, grouchy, hunchy types. Everyone else was a bit in love with the idea.

Even when people didn't stop and give me something to listen to, they wanted to: "oh, I'm sorry, but i would if i did", and some great chats about what I was doing and why.

And then there were the 20-odd people who stopped and did give me something to listen to. A really great mix of music - nothing shit and always an interesting, or enlightening conversation afterwards.

I'll post the playlist on site in the next few days, but here's a pic of the notes i made on the inside of the booth.

I'm taking the booth into a festival environment this weekend - the Hackney Wicked Weekend at Shoreditch.
If you're in the hood, come on down!