Following Strangers

The final piece

These planning proposals are displayed around Glasgow from the 8th of March 2021 to the 14th of March 2021, when I shall take them down. 

The proposals, designed to mimic council planning permissions, suggest you do things that push personal ethics - such as following strangers - and allows you to consider how you would feel to undertake the acts described, if you were told to do so by authority.

The work explores the privacy and public, authority, surveillance and ethics.

There are 20 proposals in total, gradually getting more and more unethical, starting with following a stranger down the street to sleeping in a stranger’s bed.

There is a link to a website - www.followingstrangers.com - to respond to the proposals, as well as a map to find the rest. These were all put up during my daily walks and the idea is that people spot them doing the same.

This project started by following people around myself and mapping where they go, you can look in detail at each of my walks on my blog.

However I also made videos and took photos following people, drawing a sketch of them from memory and narrated as I walked.

As well as exploring the ethics, I also questioned how the project would differ depending on the gender of the follower. I asked a question on my story, whether your feelings would change, if it was a man or a woman following you, and these were the responses.

The overwhelming response was from women saying that they would be much more worried if it was a man, so in response I made these pieces.