Sidewalk stories: Janet Cardiff’s audio-visual excursions

Abstract

Everyday situations in city space have been attracting the interest of artists since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the 1960s the performance of the artwork shifted into the public space and as a consequence site-specific analysis of spaces with their complex layers and topologies has become an important subject in contemporary artistic practice. This paper explores the cinematic imaginary space produced by the interplay of image, word, and sound connected to urban environments. The experimental combination of these components and dimensions is at the center of Janet Cardiff’s work. In her site-specific audio walks the Canadian artist involves the audience in complex fictional stories with plot and narrative voice as well as major and minor characters. These stories do not unfold in purely virtual spaces, but instead take place in the scenery of city space, where they merge with ephemeral contingencies. By directing the walkers on their explorations, contextualizing and commenting on their subjective encounters in the physical world, the artist expands the boundaries of the cinematic disposition. This article analyzes Cardiff’s audio walks in connection with contemporary soundwalk practice and the role of sound in spatial imaginations. Focusing on the practice of walking in various discourses and contexts of literature and film, it reads the artistic work within a framework of cinematic phenomenology and theories by the Situationist International.