Arts Thread

Phantasmagoria (2024) is a series of prints, video and installation work that explores surveillance and spectacles through walking posture. Beginning on 1 January 2024, footage is taken daily from the Abbey Road Cam, a 24/7 webcam that captures the pedestrian crossing made famous by the Beatles’ album cover 55 years ago. Every day, pilgrims from all around the world follow the band’s footsteps and pose for a picture. This cultural icon activates the crossing to become a stage for “live” performances, whether it be normal walking, re-enactments or other impromptu moves. Pedestrian figures are extracted from the footage to form a body of work that illustrates the dynamics between voyeurism and exhibitionism, as well as the viewer’s fascination with the moving image. The series includes works entitled Something (20240101-), Attracts Me Like a Record Player, You Stick Around Now It May Show and Abbey Road Movies. In Something (20240101-), a pedestrian figure is extracted each day to form a series of the walking posture, tracing back to Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic experiments in the late 19th century that look at human locomotion. Like Muybridge’s work, Attracts Me Like a Record Player explores the nuance between still and moving images. Frames of surveillance footage are printed on a vinyl record and are reanimated with the phone’s camera, making use of early film technology to create the illusion of motion. In Abbey Road Movies, footage on different days is stacked, with the pedestrians’ movements being “choreographed” to form a collective performance. An archive of individual “performances” is shown on the video sculpture. Now, if you stick around the big TV screen, it may show your walking posture as a spectacle. I started this project with a research on surveillance in London. I came across the Abbey Road Cam and was intrigued by it. I started watching strangers repeat the same action again and again. I found that while some crossed the road for the sake of posing, others actually crossed for the sake of crossing, yet all of their postures were almost the same. I was drawn by this fact and the implications behind the behaviours. I first developed the idea to stack screenshots of the webcam to form an installation work. The stacking enables the postures of each individual, as a performer, to be concealed or revealed. The idea was expanded after further reflection on surveillance, spectacles, and early cinema history, leading to a full body of work in the final showcase.