Word In Transit
Interview with Yoke Collective after their W.I.T Residency.
We talk to Yoke Collective ahead of their video performance to be published on the Word in Transit web page.
For those who don’t know, could you tell us about Yoke Collective, who you are and what you do?
Yoke is a collaborative project between artists Emily Roderick and Georgina Rowlands. Our practice centers around identity politics relating to surveillance and autonomy in the digital age. We explore these issues primarily through performance and video works that exists both IRL and URL. Currently living in different areas of the UK, our project looks to also directly address the issues and benefits around collaborating through the online world and developing a practice that resides within web addresses.
Your performance is the culmination of your residency for Word in Transit. For those who haven’t seen it, could you explain what you were doing?
Throughout the two week Instagram residency for Word in Transit, we were researching and exploring the rules, regulations and the general usage of surveillance within TFL. Each day our posts would reflect new issues we had found or information we were digesting. Keeping within the walls of Instagram these findings only scratched the surface of TFL and began what might turn into a much bigger long term project of research and performance.
Your residency started promising a step by step guide on how to hide from TFL. Is it possible to remain anonymous whilst riding the tube?
This is a question that we are still trying to answer. In
theory there are ways to hide from TFL but TFL have to obey laws and regulations, as citizens so do we. Currently there is definitely a small number of ways that can ‘reduce your image’ and distort it in some way from TFL, but we are interested in going one step further.
What can we gain or learn from being more aware and vigilant whilst riding public transport?
The current problem goes all the way back to pretty much all of us clicking accept and not sitting down to read the “t’s and c’s”. (Yoke included). By being more aware and vigilant on the tube you can become more aware of how you portray yourself both IRL and URL and become aware of what remnants of data you are leaving behind for other people to harvest. We get that no one wants to read the whole Data Protection Act 1998 or read the terms of using a programme, but understanding that with all these uses comes a condition that you might not want is the first step to living your daily life more under your rules. This artist project is all about learning the deeper ethics of these issues, and whether that is good or bad we find out along the way.
And finally, what’s your favourite tube line?
The Northern Line.
Head here to see Yoke Collective’s video performance.