In Telling Cards, individual visitors are invited to sit at a roadside stall and select a sequence of specially made cards. Each card is read as a visual mnemonic, based on stories harvested by Vicars from different sources. Moving between sites around Whitstable, she uses the format of a card teller to entice passersby and release these surprisingly specific tales, each belonging to an absent other. Chance plays a part in deciding whether a story holds personal significance for its target – whether they find or reject the potential connections that lie in every tale.
New work commissioned as part of the Performance Programme at the 2008 Whitstable Biennale.
Whitstable Biennale
My interest:
In turning the stories/memories/anecdotes I had collected from other people into a pack of cards, I was generating a way that audience could pick them out by chance as part of a kind of game. I was interested in what connections the audience might find or elaborate from the stories as I told them.
Playing cards have a history of use for gambling, fortune telling and as means of organising knowledge, and all these aspects engage my interest.
Image: Four cards from the series (Photo: Natasha Vicars)
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