Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

• Published in: Border crossings 2003-11, Vol.22 (4)
• Main Author: Elwes, Catherine
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canadian art; Cardiff, Janet; Miller, George B; Motion pictures; Video art
• ISSN: 0831-2559

The Whitechapel Gallery in London is currently showing four works by Cardiff and her collaborator George Bures Miller, all of which use technology to trick the ear and confuse the eye. The Missing Voice (Case Study B) was commissioned four years ago by Artangel specifically for the Whitechapel and forms part of Cardiff's repertoire of accompanied walks that, in the context of the UK capital, find an echo in the many walking tours on offer--Victorian London, Ghosts of London, etc. In Cardiff's tour, however, the artist is herself a ghost and remains an unseen guide, issuing her instructions as a disembodied voice on a pre-recorded CD. The quality of her voice is much enhanced by the now familiar binaural sound-recording technique that creates in the auditor an impression that cars, birds and people are standing right behind her or passing through her. The listener thus becomes the transparent ghost that the other, simulated, world cannot see. Armed with Discman and headphones, I stumble out into the bustle of Whitechapel High Street and my ability to distinguish art from life becomes alarmingly unreliable. Simulated noises and voices become confused with sounds that I attributed to my surrounding environment and my disorientation is aggravated by my immediately taking a wrong turn. As I struggle to keep up with the itinerary, Cardiff's voice now displaces my own internal monologue and invites me to walk with her as "a way to remember, to make life more real." Curiously, the whole experience makes life a good deal less real as the past and the present converge and diverge through the content of the voice-over text and within the disparity between what Cardiff saw three years ago in Whitechapel and what I see on this rainy day in June. Men she followed have now gone and are replaced by others, clones in city suits. The banana skin she avoided has been swept away and the Hare Krishna tribe that seem to pass through my body chanting and clanging their cymbals have long returned to their meditations. Cardiff talks about the desire to be invisible, a common fantasy among beautiful young women who are continually the object of unwanted attention. I reflect that middle age will bring the anonymity she craves soon enough. But there is little space for my own musings as I struggle to keep pace with the tour.