The Lives Of Others (2015) - New Art West Midlands Exhibition 2015

Performance/Intervention (3 hours)

The Lives of Others (2015) was performed at the Barber Institute at the awards ceremony for New Art West Midlands 2015. Auluk responded to the activity that took place, capturing words, snippets of conversation of others watching the performance by using a 1980’s typewriter.

The Lives of Others is a response to Auluk’s anxiety around his anxieties of his degenerating eye sight in relation to his Diabetes condition and in part inspired by Ulrich Muhe’s performance as a Stasi secret policeman in the film of the same name set in the former German Democratic Republic, 1984. Muhe’s character Captain Gerd Wiesler is engaged in the surveillance of the suspected anti-communist activity of a playwright and his partner, recording his voyeuristic findings on a typewriter. Similarly, Auluk will be sitting still, visually impaired (with his spectacles that he uses to block out light after routine diabetic scans of his eyes) and typing what he hears and experiences – a disrupted narrative of sorts - in an attempt to capture the space between what is private and public and the ethical conflict of this, replaying the sound of the typewriting back in to the space.

Previous

In two places at once (2019)
Next

'I am sorry to inform you ...' - West Midlands Open, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (2014)