CITYtalking

Astra Howard

The CITYtalking conversation booth was wheeled around Melbourne’s CBD for five weeks, each day stopping in six different laneways across the city. Members of the public were encouraged to enter inside this booth to engage in a conversation with Astra who sat opposite in a separate compartment. The two speakers were unable to see each other, instead communicating blindly via an intercom receiver.

As members of the public spoke, Astra typed their dialogue into a laptop computer, attempting to capture as much of the personality of the storyteller as possible. Once the conversation was over Astra would then communicate this text to two LED screens positioned on the outside of the booth. In this way the private conversation between two strangers within the booth became accessible to passing pedestrians outside: people agreeing to have their story transmitted into the public domain. Over the course of five weeks, a diverse range of people engaged with the project, from five year olds to fifty year olds, from buskers to businessmen, homeless people to hairdressers, students to stonemasons and tourists to telemarketers. The conversations therefore ranged from the personal to the political, from the plain to the profound, as an accumulating narrative, a social archive of life in Melbourne circa 2006.

Leonie (a local homeless women) for example, initially approached the CITYtalking booth in quite a hostile manner, responding as if it was just another entity designing her out of the city. But as soon as she realised that the projects purpose was to provide a space for listening, she became quite lucid and emotional. Leonie began: “My experience is that nobody wants to know, none of the ruling class wants to know. People are dying in the gutter and it is hidden. I do not know anyone else who is in the gutter and is able to speak. They are either dead, in prostitution, in gaol or in a psychiatric ward. I am lucky to be here, to have survived and now be able to speak about it. No one wants to listen to what the government did. You are just supposed to get it all together. I have not had a secure place to this day. How do I get on my feet again? I need a voice. I am so distressed I do not know how I have the strength to walk half the time. They take away your personality.”

Many passing pedestrians expressed their genuine enthusiasm for the projects ability to provide a safe space for dialogue between strangers. They also highlighted the lack of such opportunity for individuals to speak about their fears and hopes for the world around them in any other space of the city. This being the case, local business operators and street personalities eagerly awaited the daily return of the CITYtalking booth, as an increasingly necessary and integral part of the social, architectural and psychological city scene.

Howley Place. Sunday 8 Oct 2006. Joseph - I am originally from London. I moved to Glasgow to study and then moved to Berlin. I have been in Melbourne for the past two years. A woman drew me here.
Some of the cultural stuff in this city gets me down. Unless you have a dodgy 80s haircut and drive a ute you are not really considered to be Australian. I gave up being a professional musician and worked selling pharmaceuticals.
I sold my house in England, it was all very chicky-mickey, suave and sophisticated. I have started working for a chemical company here in Melbourne.
I have found that Australians are not very open in terms of expressing their feelings. It takes a long while in any conversation before you can get someone to actually admit to how they are.

Centre Place. Saturday 14 October 2006. Renato - I was just busking down here at Centre Place. The members of our band met at Tafe. We were about 19 years old then, all misfits.
Six years later we are still here, playing a mix of traditional folk music from Europe and the Middle East.
We all learnt our instruments for the band, the accordion player for example was a guitarist, we have just got less and less crap as time goes on. It is about anarchy for us, not really about virtuosity.
That is why we all like playing on the street, because people are ready to respond and it is also quite fleeting. The public can stay for as long as they like and so can we. In this way it feels a lot freer.

Bourke Street Mall. Sunday 8 October 2006. Jean - I am from the Western suburbs of Melbourne.
I have been selling the Big Issue in Melbourne for the past two months. I love seeing the time moving by watching the shadows change on the pavement. I also love seeing the different way people dress and how the city moves.
There are some incredibly generous people out there with an extra buck to hand over.
Some days it is rainy and often very cold, but I can change my pitch and buy lots of hot chocolates. I might start bringing a thermos. At the moment I love living in Melbourne. The only thing I do not like is the horse poo.

Cohen Place. Thursday 5 October 2006. Jackie - I work at Vincents Dom, a barber shop. I have been working there for 11 years. We were merged from the Southern Cross Hotel, that is where I used to work, starting back in 1977.
People often ask me whether I get bored, but I have never thought of that, you have to be a character who likes talking and listening.
I was born in Melbourne. I have two children and the same husband. My son, Peter is twenty, my daughter is sixteen. My daughter is in year ten.

Liverpool Street. Sunday 15 October 2006. Orriel - I have just been to the theatre, to the philosophical society, a typical type-cast bunch of senile people, philosophising about the meaning of life.
I have been going to there for the past eight years. It is full of bored middle-aged people, wearing purple sashes and looking scary as sin. I have tried to take my girlfriend there, but she gets eclectically bored.

Astra Howard is an action researcher/performer working predominantly within public city spaces. She has produced over one hundred works as part of her doctoral and post-doctoral research in China, India, France, the USA and Australia. Her most recent solo works have been commissioned by, the City of Melbourne, the Frankston City Council and the Queensland Department of Communities. Howard also works in a crisis accommodation in Sydney, designing and facilitating educational programs and professional services for the homeless, marginalised and disadvantaged community.