Public Address - The Peoples' Wall
This project documents an urban ritual prevalent in the North Down and Ards areas of Northern Ireland. Hand-made banners and photocopied posters are displayed in public places to notify passers-by of a person’s birthday. These home-made ‘bulletins’ are created by friends or family-members to both celebrate the event and publicly humiliate the individual named. Sometimes childhood images are incorporated into the posters to add to the embarrassment. The types of places selected for display are ritualistically the same bridges, fences, hedges and lamp posts along busy stretches of road or at major junctions. The artists are interested in the theory of ‘memes’ originated by Richard Dawkins, in which cultural ideas/actions spread through a virus-like action. Our intention is to implant this area-specific meme onto a host body ( gallery /exterior space) to ascertain if it can propagate, survive, replicate or mutate.