Further images / Return to 2002
Description: The Action Researcher/Performer collected a series of school exercise books left on the pavement with household detritus waiting for council pick-up. She then reproduced a series of extracts from these notebooks using chalk directly onto the pavement. Positioned in various footpath sites throughout inner-city Sydney, diary entries and school teacher issued 'punishment lines' were written in large format, being conscious not to include any identifying names to keep the 'publication' anonymous. After reading the chalk-marked pavement, a German tourist began to discuss his relationship to the city of Sydney and its inhabitants as well as disclosing in great detail his childhood experiences and customs formed within European towns and cities. Anonymous public settings became the backdrop for personal tales of childhood experience, records of the minutia of everyday life and proclamations about love, disquiet within the city and death, all of which were otherwise destined for landfill.