Mentioning

Marcelo Spinelli: When was your show at Anthony Reynolds, your first show?

Georgina Starr: Anthony saw this exhibition in July, and he asked me to do something in October in his space. I think people realise from that work, looking at the Whistle and the Static Steps, that I had worked, in a way, in a certain space. It was quite site-specific, to do with the building. And so Anthony asked me to come and spend some time around the area where the gallery was; and [said] would I like to make a piece that was almost site-specific to this area.

It was terrible because it was the first time that I'd been asked to do something. Normally I just worked on my own and followed my own little things. But as soon as you get asked to do something you go, Oh my God! What am I going to do? I spent three or four weeks just riding up and down on buses and sitting in cafés and bars, and going to the cinema and just kind of living around there, in a way. Every day I wandered around, shopping and doing all sorts of stuff.

Obviously, you know, it's just the people; it's so fascinating watching people. I think the first thing I really noticed was that when you're on a bus, you're watching people having conversations and you don't know what they are having conversations about, but they're really animated and there are all these gestures. And so I started to take photos and things like that. Then after a while I realised that it was actually the conversations that were the most interesting for me. So I started recording. I took out a DAT [recorder] and a microphone and I'd hide it in my bag and just record the people that were next to me in cafés. Or if I was at a bus stop and two people were stood there I'd record that. Or on a tube.... I got quite carried away with it; it became quite obsessive.

In cafés, I'd go and sit next to people. If I went in and there was a couple there and one person on their own, I'd go and sit next to the couple. I'd find myself always getting near these couples; and it was always couples - I don't think I ever recorded any more people. I was just interested in the one-to-one conversations. I did that for about a month and I must have recorded about forty different conversations. It was always snippets of conversations. The weird thing about it is that I never looked at the people because I was terrified that they knew I was recording them. They couldn't have known that I was terrified... What if the battery runs out and it starts beeping; or what if they notice the little red light in my bag or something? - I'd never look at them, so I never knew what any of them looked like. I mean, originally I saw them, but then I never knew what movements they made. All I had was the sound.

It was always quite a poor-quality sound as well, because it was in quite busy places. So when I got home I'd listen to it and you'd have to listen to it maybe twenty times to decipher what they were saying because all the other bits of conversation would come in. Obviously you'd record that, and you'd record sounds in the bag and stuff like that. I think that was the most exciting part, actually deciphering it. It really felt like some sort of detective work, writing it down. And some parts of it would be fictitious because you'd imagine that's what they said, but maybe it wasn't. So there were parts that were real and parts that maybe were a bit made up - what I'd imagine they were going to say. I transcribed all these, maybe twenty of them.

At first I was going to use the actual conversations, but because they were such bad quality I couldn't actually do that, so I went back to these little figures again because I thought the figures could make the gestures for what I couldn't see. So I made again these two small figures and I had a little table and two small chairs. And, again, I did the acetate thing and recorded them moving. Their arms were moving and they might stand up on a chair and fall around and they'd become quite animated. I used the conversations as sub-titles on the videos, so when you watched the video you would see this movement and you'd see this conversation running in sub-titles on the video. And I also made Mentioning; that was part of it.

One of the conversations was with this woman. There were two people there, but she was talking a lot and it was like a monologue, almost. She was saying, "I've mentioned it to so many people" and "when's he going to find out", and it was really engrossing... Maybe about a relationship, maybe about someone really tasty who she doesn't really know. I was only there about a minute or so when I recorded this section, but it did sound so sad. And I thought, just have it as a monologue, not a conversation. Maybe it's not good enough. Maybe it's closer to a song, in a way, like a lament. And so I put music to it.

MS: Is it correct that the music you used is taken from someone whistling a song?

GS: Yes. I can't remember if it was the same time I recorded that conversation or maybe it was on another tape; but because I was interested in the whistling thing anyway, I was always recording people whistling. Then this one guy just whistled the beginning bars of the Mentioning song. I used only that first line of music from that whistle - I don't know what song it was; I didn't recognize it. And then I wrote the rest of it myself, and played it. I got a friend to play it on the clarinet. I just told her the kind of tune I wanted and then I took it to this guy who was a record producer that someone had put me in contact with, and he helped me to produce the music; to put it on a synthesizer.

We did it all on a synthesizer, even the flute and the drums and everything are on this synthesizer; it's a really crap-basic thing. Then I was looking for a singer for ages to do it, and I'd heard this woman singing - again, it was at a friend's house. She had singing lessons and used to practice her singing with the window open. Her voice would really float around, and I thought it would be so perfect to use her voice. So I hung around a bit and then I called her up and I met her and she said she'd be quite interested to do it, but she was busy that two weeks. So I went to the recording place and the guy said just sing it yourself and I'll see how it sounds. And he said, 'Oh you've got to do it, you've got to do it yourself. Forget about getting somebody else'.

That was the first time that I had really sung, properly, and I really got into it once I'd started. I thought it was so good to do it myself, it really made sense rather than to get somebody else to do it. So I just recorded it and made an edition of it. At the gallery, I had the video of the two figures and the conversations, and in the back of the space you could hear me singing this song and there was a monitor at the back with the words of the song like kareoke coming out. There were three versions; one with me singing with the music, and there was one with just my voice, and there was one with just the music. The last one was supposed to be for other people to start joining in - because they had the music and the words - but nobody did!

MS: Did you produce the tapes as multiples?

GS: Yes, I think I made an edition of fifty or something like that of this little box set with all the conversations in the book, and then the musical score, and then the tape with the singing on it. It became like a little book edition.

MS: The song really works. All the lyrics are so poignant. And the song is quite pop-y, but it really works, like pop songs do.

GS: Yes, I felt I wanted it to be like a pop song, not really like a good taste thing. Like the Neighbours tune or something. It felt like it could be the tune for a soap opera or something. It really fit into this conversation thing as well, really more like everyday life than some kind of amazing rock song, or something. It was definitely more something that Kylie Minogue would do...